2009 Tour Narrative
In Brief: We stood on the Place de la République, that first warm, bright evening in Arles, and soaked it in: an Egyptian obelisk imported by the Romans, the famous west front of Romanesque St-Trophime, the Renaissance tower of the Hotel de Ville. From the top floors of Mansart’s city hall sounded the strains of the Marseillaise; a woman dressed in the traditional Arlesian skirt and cap came down the stairs, while little children of all colors played noisy peek-a-boo behind the French flag draped from the balcony. And above it all the Common Swifts screamed, Black Redstarts gurgled, and Black Kites soared silently to roost. I couldn’t have planned any of it—it was simply spring in Provence, that heart-rendingly beautiful land of culture, history, and birds.
In Detail:
Note: Our 2010 itinerary omits Mount Ventoux and Avignon in favor of more time at the Van Gogh sites between Arles and St-Rémy.
Those few minutes on the city’s main square would have been enough by themselves to make our first evening a wonderful one, but we went on to enjoy the first of many spectacular meals featuring the special foods and wines of Provence. Just around the corner from the Place du Forum, La Gueule du Loup—the Wolf’s Maw—was quickly (and, as it turns out, prematurely!) pronounced our favorite restaurant.
The next day was our first full day together, and we started it, as we would every morning, with a lavish breakfast in our hotel. Meats and cheeses, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, yogurt, juices, breads, croissants and pains au chocolat, coffee, and hot chocolate fortified us for the drive north to Mont Ventoux, by way of Avignon, Carpentras, and Bédoin. We were just out of Arles, with impressive numbers of Black-billed Magpies and Eurasian Collared-Doves already under our belts, when the first officially “good” bird of the tour appeared on the wire: European Roller! The bird sat long enough for us to enjoy it in good light—and then it was joined on its wire perch by a second. Another mile or so north, a third roller appeared, making a good showing for that species—our first of the French “big five.”
Mountains make their own weather, and by the time we arrived at Ventoux, rain was threatening. As the clouds lowered, we enjoyed singing Woodlarks and a few other common species, then continued our ascent to Chalet-Reynard, where we stood in the parking lot talking about Petrarch and scoping Northern Wheatear, Common Crossbill, and Dunnock. Nest-building Winter Wrens were busy in spite of the weather, and a small gang of Crested Tits moved through. What made the soggy walk worth it were the four Citril Finches that showed briefly just above our heads.
We repaired–along with a significant percentage of France’s bicycling population–to the cafe for hot chocolate and a fine lunch, leaving us warm on the inside for our return to Arles, where, predictably, skies were blue, the air bright, and temperatures were 20 degrees warmer. After our usual afternoon break, it was off to the Roman and early Christian art of the city’s big blue museum. The sarcophagus collection here is one of the most important and beautiful in the world, and thanks to its open and appealing layout, the entire museum presents an image of richness without the overwhelming effect of so many collections of antiquities. Particularly useful were the models of Roman Arles, providing us with reference points as we got to know the modern city better.
The next day turned up the rarest bird of our tour. The Petite Camargue is the somewhat misleading name given to what are in fact the most extensive reedbeds in all of France. The reeds were healthier—and taller—this year than most, but we found several openings where we could watch Great and Little Egrets, Gray and Purple Herons, Black-winged Stilts, and Great Reed Warblers. A lone Squacco Heron flew past, and the 15 or more Glossy Ibis were a very good tally for this spreading invader. Of the abundant Common Swifts overhead, one pair apparently copulated, mid-air, right in front of us, proving once again that the common birds can provide as much excitement as any.
But then came the fateful words of a lynx-eyed participant. The rest of us swung around and got the scopes on two Purple Swamphens, an adult and a juvenile. They remained visible on the edge for a couple of minutes, then melted back into the dense vegetation. Like Glossy Ibis, this essentially African bird is expanding its range in the Mediterranean, but this huge, colorful rail is still a very infrequent sight in western Europe outside of Spain.
With a stop at one of the tour’s three occupied White Stork nests, we continued to Aigues Mortes for lunch. Built by Saint Louis in the thirteenth century, this fortress is one of the most imposing in southern France, and we took time to wander the thriving town inside, enjoying both its historic sights and its lively but still tasteful tourist offerings. Our lunch on a quiet side street, just down from the grim Gothic church where Louis and his crusaders had taken the cross 750 years ago, was one of the best of the tour.
After lunch, in keeping with the crusader theme, we went on to St-Gilles. Even with the east end in ruins, this Romanesque church remains impressive, and the sculptures of the west front are often considered the most beautiful in France. We “read” the iconography of the lintels and tympana together, then pondered the evident line of descent from the early Christian sarcophaguses we’d seen in Arles the day before to the stately figures on the friezes here. Our afternoon break was followed by yet another in the unending series of excellent dinners.
Alternating coastal sites with inland, we spent the next day exploring Les Alpilles, a chain of rugged limestone hills just northeast of Arles. In the mixed woodland of La Caume, Common Chaffinches shouted at us all morning, giving very fine views, and a few Common Ravens and a small party of nervous Crested Tits rounded out the modest bird list. La Caume is famous, too, for its flowers, and this year the soft violet petals and bright yellow anthers of rockroses Cistus were scattered everywhere among the wild rosemary.
We had lunch at Les Baux, with its ruined castle perched above a beautifully preserved medieval village. Afterwards, some of us wandered the captivating narrow streets, while others braved the wind up where natural stone and human structures merge. Crag Martin and Alpine Swift shot through the ruins, while Serins and Black Redstarts sang from rooftops below. Butterflying was good in the shelter of the castle walls, too, and one of my favorite sights was of an elegant swallowtail sharing its bed of lavender with a dashing little hawk moth.
We woke the next morning to another bright, clear, calm morning, one of those perfect southern France days for exploring the Camargue. European Rollers performed very nicely again, one of our five or so individuals providing especially good photo opportunities as it hunted in a small orchard. And soon enough the landscape was dominated by another improbably colored creature. Greater Flamingos, stately and ridiculous at once, 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.
Mudflats on our approach to Stes-Maries produced a few Kentish Plovers and loafing European Oystercatchers. Crested Larks and Slender-billed Gulls were additions to the trip list, too. But the most exciting birds of the morning were the smallest. We were slowly driving the gravel road to Méjanes when a bird paused on a wire inside a bush: Spectacled Warbler! Uncharacteristically, 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.
Inspired, we pressed on to Stes-Maries, where before lunch we took some time to drop in to the heavily fortified church, with its effigy of Sara, patroness of the gypsies, whose semi-annual gathering had just concluded. After the finest pizza in France, we enjoyed European Bee-eaters and Common, Little, and two surprising Caspian Terns along the Digue road before returning to Arles for our siesta.
The Alyscamps is a scant five minutes from our hotel, one of my favorite destinations in Arles. In spite of the collecting fervor of antiquarians, vast numbers–piles upon piles–of Roman and early Christian sarcophaguses remain in situ here. Under the usual bright skies, though, and with the voices of Blackcaps and Great Tits all up and down the shaded alley, there’s surprisingly little of the memento mori about this beautiful and peaceful place. We admired the stylistic hodgepodge of St-Honorat (and its nesting Black Redstarts), then allowed ourselves to be escorted out and back into Arles by the ticket-taker, every bit as eager to get to her dinner as we were to ours.
The next morning was a complete contrast. The rocky steppe of Peau de Meau is the home of sheep, shepherds, and open-country birds more typical of Spain or North Africa. On our easy stroll, we came up with yet more European Rollers, Hoopoes, and Greater Short-toed and Crested Larks. We had outstanding looks at five Stone-curlews, and a male Little Bustard stuck his head up for a couple of us to tally. The ditch running along the north side of the preserve was full, as always, of dragonflies , and an elegant mantis hitched a ride back to the vehicles.
After the traditional lunch at the Hotel Crau, and a group photo at the Ecomuseum, we returned to Arles for a break, then set out for St-Trophime. The sculpture of the west front, in all its severity, is truly breathtaking, but it’s the cloister capitals that are even more famous—a veritable textbook of the styles and techniques of the Romanesque and the Gothic. The afternoon was so beautiful that we ascended to the upper gallery, too, for rooftop views of the cloister and all of Arles stretching out below.
We were fortunate in our choice of the next day to spend inside in Avignon, as it wound up raining for much of the time we spent in that medieval city. But not even non-birding days are birdless in the south of France: our first pair of European Rollers once again occupied the wires north of Arles where we’d seen them on Day Two.
But our real focus of the day was the city itself. We started out in the indoor markets of Les Halles, where we stocked up richly for the next day’s picnic, then walked to fourteenth-century St-Pierre to admire the church’s marvelously carved Renaissance doors. The Papal Palace was appropriately spooky in the rain; we walked through this most massive of Gothic structures, then had lunch across the square. Before driving back to Arles in the late afternoon, some of us visited the Petit Palais and its rich holdings of French and Italian sculpture and painting from the collections of the Avignon popes.
The next day, Saturday, we spent the early morning hours at Arles’s weekly market, an extravaganza of soaps and spices, herbs and textiles, olives and cheeses, wines and chickens and hares and pheasants and guineafowl. We still hadn’t seen it all when we headed out one last time into the marshes of the Camargue. Most of us finally got satisfying glimpses of Cetti’s Warbler, that loudest of invisible birds, and the European Bee-eater colony was as busy as the birds were bright. A brief pause for a Melodious Warbler turned into an outstanding experience with a Common Cuckoo, flying down from the wires, shrike-like, every few moments to come up with a great hairy caterpillar.
Patient scanning paid off well at the famous ponds of Mas d’Agon. A family of Mute Swans included one white cygnet among the more usual gray birds, and a pair of Great Crested Grebes were providing grebe-back transport for their striped young. Whiskered and Common Terns swooped low over our heads, and Squacco Herons emerged to perch and preen in the open. The ornithological high point of the day came when first one, then another Little Bittern flew across the road, a rare sight in the Camargue.
A morning like that called for celebration. The shaded tables at La Capelière are the best of all settings to enjoy the breads and cheeses and fine salads and wines of Provence. And nothing could improve on the table music of Cetti’s Warblers, Blackcaps, and Common Nightingales. Sustained physically and spiritually, we moved on, pausing for a flock of 13 Gull-billed Terns before we arrived in Arles for a break and another wonderful dinner.
The next day was already our last afield. Between Wood Pigeons, Common Redstarts, White Wagtails, Serins, Greenfinches, and our best looks yet at Cirl Buntings, it took us more than an hour to walk the hundred yards from the parking lot to the first-century Roman aqueduct of the Pont du Gard. Our first picids of the tour were a pair of Great Spotted Woodpeckers attending a nest. As the air warmed, a pair of Honey Buzzards rose to circle, giving lingering scope views. White and Gray Wagtails worked the rocks, while everything from hovering House Sparrows to Crag Martins took advantage of the morning’s insect hatch. A turquoise and orange streak over the water announced the arrival of the star of the morning’s show, a Common Kingfisher. Impossibly colorful, the bird perched for several minutes before disappearing downstream—the last of the European “big five” (with Cuckoo, Bee-eater, Roller, and Hoopoe) for our trip list.
The return to the vehicles is always delayed at the Pont du Gard, this time by a brief flyby Golden Oriole, followed by exquisitely good scope views of Rock Sparrow. As we turned from the Rock Sparrow, two Green Woodpeckers materialized out of the grass, perching low on tree trunks for all the world to admire. As we entered Beaucaire for lunch beneath the riverside castle, we watched the excitement as the bulls for the afternoon’s course were driven down the main street of town by pony-mounted gardiens and brave boys on foot—a classic scene we would never have witnessed if not for the avian delays at the Pont du Gard.
Good birds all, every day of the tour. But even better birding, immeasurably enhanced by the knowledge that the birds we were enjoying fit so perfectly into their landscape, a landscape created by nature and by thousands of years of culture. There would be no Crag Martins or Alpine Swifts at the Pont if not for the presence of a Roman aqueduct, and no Green Woodpeckers if not for the careful mowing of the overflow parking. People, birds, and landscapes are inextricably bound together in the history of western Europe, and part of the point of our tour to southern France is to make those connections explicit. And again and again we succeeded: a Black Redstart nesting in a crack in a Gothic arch in the Alyscamps, Stone-curlews pacing the overgrazed steppe of La Crau, even the Blue Tit picking food from the rooftops during our final exquisite dinner together all bore witness to the way that nature and culture, birds and art, can be understood only when viewed together. Birding provides the focus for our Birds and Art tours, but travel provides the experience.
-Rick Wright
Updated: June 2009