Bonjour again from the Camargue, in southern France. We had a lovely and illuminating visit last year and there were so many surprising and interesting things going on we thought we should do it again. Getting there is a trek. Three plane rides and a 90 minute drive but it all went very smoothly. We arrived in the village of St. Laurent d'Aigouze about 7 PM on Sept 26th.  We were, of course, exhausted, but our hosts were so welcoming and gracious we had to have a drink with them. We would be experiencing French country living, and cooking, for the next four days. 

_8504527 Above is the symbol of the Camargue, a combination of an anchor, a heart, and the cross. This region is basically the Rhone river delta, going from just west of Marseille to Sete. It is dead flat with half of it under water in lakes or marshes. Below are Sylvie and Gerard, our hosts in their lovely back garden, holding their pets. Yes the turtle is one of the pets. They have a large family of them living in the garden.

Sylvie and Gerard One of our primary objectives in traveling all this way was to photograph the white horses and black bulls of the Camargue. All of the bulls used in French type bullfighting (where the bull is not killed) are raised in this area and the cult of the bull dominates the region. Every town and village has a bull festival of some kind. To maximize my time I signed up for a workshop with Cecile Domens, a very accomplished photographer who lives in the Camargue. You can see her work at cecile-domens-photo.com.

Cecile Domens

Friday Sept 27th

We had scheduled a cushion day before the photo sessions with Cecile, to recover from the jet lag and possibly to pursue the other major photo subject in the Camargue, flamingos! In the spring and summer there are up to 50,000 flamingos nesting in the marshes. Most of them migrate to Africa for the winter but about 5,000 stay all year.  

Friday morning we both managed to sleep in and got the worst of the jet lag behind us. So after lunch we set out to the Camargue Ornithological Park. The entire Camargue is a haven for wild birds but this part of it has prepared walking paths and the birds are a little more indifferent to people. 

_8504543 _8504634 _8504806 _8504940 _8504943 Below is a juvenile, of which we only saw a few.

_8504811 Coming at this time of year means a lot of the most interesting behaviors, such as courtship and fighting, are not on display. But we did get a little taste of it, pictured below.

_8504585 One odd behavior we did see is demonstrated below. It looks like bathing. The birds sit down in the water and scrub themselves with their heads, just like scrubbing a four year old boy. Then they stand up and spread their wings to dry.

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I managed to get a few of them in flight.

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We would see flamingos all over the Camargue throughout the trip. I'd hoped to get a sunset shot of them but we ran out of steam. Still a little jet lagged.