We were fortunate in our choice of June 5 as a fairly non-birding day, as it wound up raining on us for much of the time we spent in the beautiful medieval city of Avignon. But not even non-birding days are birdless in the south of France: Alison and I had a Hobby off our hotel balcony in the morning (the only one during the tour, unfortunately), and Rollers persisted at the spot north of Arles where we’d seen them at on Day Two.

But the focus of the day was Avignon, site of the Babylonian Captivity finally resolved by the Council of Constance (where Jan Hus was burned), and today a very charming little town with a very imposing big palace. We started out in Les Halles, the beautiful indoor market, where we provisioned ourselves for the next day’s picnic, then walked through the rainy streets to the Palais des Papes, stopping on the way to admire the Renaissance doors of St-Pierre.

The church itself was a project of one of the Avignon popes in the 1380s, but the spectacular wooden carvings of the west front were produced in the sixteenth. The annunciation here is matched on the north doors by a St. Michael and a St. Jerome, all flanked by some truly fantastic grotesques.

There’s nothing inside to really compare with the splendor of these doors, but one chapel is dedicated with especial poignancy to Peter of Luxembourg, who came to Avignon in the 1380s to serve in the curia, then directly caught the plague and died. The effects of those hundred years on western culture and on individual fates can hardly be exaggerated.

We hastened on to the Papal Palace, which was appropriately grim and spooky in the rain.

I’ve decided next year to omit this visit from the tour’s itinerary: the time will be better spent visiting some of the Van Gogh sites in and around St-Rémy. But it’s still fun to get a sense of how massively well funded, and yet how fearful, the lives of the Avignon popes were. One tidbit I learned this year: only two people were allowed knives in the dining room–the pope and the meat carver.

Lunch at In and Off, a casual restaurant across the square, was surprisingly good this year, another reminder that you really can’t go wrong by asking the waiter what’s fresh on the menu! Then it was off to the Petit Palais, where some of the tremendous quantity of art brought in by, commissioned by, or stolen by the Avignon popes is on display. I’ve never once had enough time to go through the place slowly (it would take days upon days), but still greatly enjoyed visiting some of my old favorites, like this incredibly Gothic angel

and this so obviously suffering Job:

This year I tried to tear myself away from the sculpture and spend more time on the Italian painters.

While the rest of Avignon huddled around the Botticelli, I devoted myself to this sternly beautiful Florentine Virgin Mary and Christ Child, painted in the early fifteenth century by Mariotto di Nardo. She’s flanked by John the Baptist, Catherine (with her wheel), Margaret (with her poison cup), and Francis, but the most captivating bit is the orchestra at the foot of the throne.

As always, the day had gone too fast and threatened to grow too long. We maneuvered our way back out of Avignon and were in Arles by 5:15, giving us almost two hours before dinner–just time to begin sifting through the day’s memories.

A tile from the floor of the dining room in the Papal Palace, Avignon.

One of my favorite days on this tour is our visit to the Peau de Meau preserve, the only readily accessible portion of the rocky steppe of La Crau.

In spite of the beautiful openness of the habitat, birding can be challenging out here. But in our morning’s stroll out to the sheep barns and blind, we came up with European Rollers, Hoopoes, Greater Short-toed and Crested Larks, and plenty of Black Kites, the bird of the Crau. Among the real specialties of the area, we had outstanding looks at five Stone-curlews, including a pair just across the road from the parking area, and a lone male Little Bustard stuck his head up over the grass once in a while for at least a couple of us to tally.

Nearly as exciting as the birds was the insect life. The ditch running along the north side of the preserve was full, as always, of dragons and damsels, and an elegant mantis hitched a ride back to the vehicles on my pant leg.

There are two inviolable traditions after a visit to the Peau de Meau: lunch at the Hotel Crau

and a group photo at the Ecomuseum.

We had a nice afternoon’s break at our hotel in Arles, then set out on the five-minute walk to St-Trophime.

The sculpture of the west front, in all its stern severity, is truly breathtaking, but it’s the capitals of the cloister that are even more famous in the history of European art.

One of my favorites: the dream of the three kings, asleep in their shared bed.

The upper gallery was irresistible on such a beautiful day, and we all enjoyed the views of the cloister from above and the rooftops of Arles beneath the ancient tower of St-Trophime.

June 3 found us heading south on a bright, clear morning to the Mediterranean coast at Stes-Maries. Unlike last year’s rainy, windy, brutal day, the Camargue and the dike road treated us to one of those perfect southern France days, with bright air and gentle winds, perfect for leisurely birding our way down the bird-filled 25 miles or so to the shore.

It was another good European Roller day, with no fewer than five individuals on the way down.

This is a bird that’s impossible to ignore (and almost as hard, I found, to photograph!), and so much more beautiful than the pictures in the birdy-books make it seem. And soon enough we found it sharing the landscape with another improbably colored creature.

Greater Flamingos abounded in the roadside pools as we approached Stes-Maries, and even after we’d seen our first several hundred, the sight of them continued to draw eyes and attention away from whatever else we happened to be looking at at the moment.

But there was a lot more to see than tall pink birds, compelling as they were. Careful scanning of the mudflats produced a few Kentish Plovers

and European Oystercatchers.

But by far the best birds of the morning were the smallest. We were slowly driving the gravel road to Méjanes when a small gang of Linnets appeared on the roadside; as we tried to maneuver for better views of the leapfrogging little creatures, a bird paused on a wire inside a bush: Spectacled Warbler! Amazingly, it remained long enough for everyone to get on it–and to see it joined by another, paler bird, no doubt the female of the pair. This is probably a common enough bird out on the salicornia flats, but they’re tiny and inconspicuous, and these were a lifer for everyone in the group. Not bad!

Inspired, we pressed on to Stes-Maries, where before lunch at Kahlua we took some time to drop in to the church. It’s an odd structure, heavily fortified and ship-like, famous around the world as the pilgrimage site for gypsies, whose semi-annual gathering had just concluded a couple of weeks before. In the crypt is the heavily draped effigy of Sarah.

Serving girl to Mary Salome and Mary Mother of James, Sara drifted with them to the mouth of the Rhone, where she too attained saintliness and is now the patroness of the gypsies–and seems to attract much more devotion than either of the Maries for whom the church and the town are named.

After lunch we enjoyed Bee-eaters, Little and two surprising Caspian Terns, and Slender-billed Gulls along the Digue road, then returned to Arles for our regular afternoon break. We gathered in the late afternoon for a stroll to the Alyscamps, one of the most peaceful sites around and the origin of many of the ancient sarcophaguses we’d admired on Sunday.

Lots–literally piles upon piles–of sarcophaguses remain in situ, making the atmosphere pleasantly creepy. But on a day like this, with bright skies and the voices of Blackcaps and Great Tits all up and down the shaded alley, the place just couldn’t rise to the level of a memento mori.

Les Alpilles–the “baby alps”–are a chain of limestone hills just northeast of Arles, famous above all for the beauty of their rugged cliffs and chasms.

The two major birding sites here are La Caume, a mixed woodland crossed by a wide, disused road, and Les Baux, the notorious hilltop castle perched above a beautifully preserved medieval village.

Birding the La Caume road.

We started at La Caume, hoping for some forest birding–a scarce commodity otherwise on this itinerary–and found it quiet, as usual. Common Chaffinches shouted at us all morning, giving some very fine views, but otherwise the only notable birds to give themselves up were a few Common Ravens and a small party of Crested Tits, which made up for the ungracious behavior of their Ventoux cousins by giving all of us good looks as they fed nervously in the conifers.

What La Caume never disappoints in, though, are flowers.

This year it was the rockroses that were especially beautiful, their soft violet petals and bright yellow anthers scattered all across the slopes.

This one was growing between what looks like two different species of rosemary.

And La Caume is also traditionally rich in butterflies, giving us something winged to look at even when the birding isn’t exactly fast-paced.

We left La Caume about noon for the quick drive up to Les Baux. The self-styled lords of Les Baux traced their ancestry, somewhat dubiously, to the magus Balthasar:

and so we entered the village through the Porte Mage, where we had a splendid lunch in the restaurant of the same name. Afterwards, some of us wandered the streets of town, and others of us made the assault on the castle ruins.

Up here, where natural stone and human structures merge, we had great looks at Crag Martin and Alpine Swift, while Serins and Black Redstarts sang from the rooftops of the village below.

Butterflying was good in the shelter of the castle walls, too, and my favorite lep image from the entire tour was the sight of an elegant swallowtail sharing its bed of lavender with a dashing little hawk moth.