Day 55: Les Saintes Maries

April 13, 2025

Flamingos!

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It's a bit of a "stretch" to locate today's post as "Les Saintes Maries" since we are about 7 km as the Flamingo flies away from the town. Instead we have established ourselves almost right across the highway from the Pont de Gau bird sanctuary, with the plan of walking around it for most of the day.

We relied on the 8 euro each breakfast here at Auberge de la Fadaise. That was the standard French one jammer, with bread and jam, reconstituted orange juice, and commercial unflavoured yogurt. But I must say, quality French bread adds up somehow to more than just bread.

We walked over to the sanctuary, fussing over the very light sprinkle of rain. That sprinkle would be definitely enough to kill our cameras, so the fussing was over ways to protect them, given that we had not brought Costa Rica level ponchos.

Our walk took us past the horse paddock, with many Camargue horses, including my two horse friends from yesterday. I am ambivalent about these paddocks, because the Camargue horses range from noble looking, clearly highly intelligent souls out in the semi-wilderness, to sometimes depressed looking individuals press ganged into carrying tourists around.

We did the short walk down highway 570, which often has too fast moving cars, and then past the Pont de Gau (bird sanctuary) parking lot. Yesterday this was just packed with people, but today in the early morning rain, we initially had just one other photo fiend - in the line ahead of us .

With the parking filled to way down the road.

But today our sole companion at first was Robert, from Bilbao in Basque country in Spain.

Robert was also a road cyclist, having ridden with a Tour de France star in France. He has a BnB in Bilbao, see artesoro.com

We did meet some other avid photographers later, like this little guy.

Pont de Gau is the best constructed and signed birding spot we know, with lots of sturdy observation platforms, hides, bridges, and direction signs. There are some ponds close to the visitor centre that are just stuffed with Flamingos, Herons, Ibis, and small waders. Then there is a much longer loop, still with quite a few hides, and benches too. In hot weather this could be a challenge, like the Albufera in Alcudia was, but today it was just "a walk in the park".

It's a wonderland of trails and ponds. The long loop to the left has the potential to house smaller hard to spot birds, while the close in ponds are jammed with Flamingos.

Our young photographer was still going strong, far out among the ponds. He sports binos, too.

Typical large and well constructed hide.

There were several serious birders about.

Quite aside from the birds, it was a great environment to walk through.

We call this the ragondin. In Germany it's the nutria and in England, coypu. I thought it could make a furry pet, Dodie says it's a large rat!

It was possible to get very close to many of the birds.

Especially at the close in ponds, the accessibility of the birds meant that I could get closer up shots of their interesting faces. Dodie, on the other hand, likes to show the larger context. Here is a mix of both styles:

Clearly a Steve shot, and the one below too!

We like the reflection with this Gray Heron.

One bird we are tickled to have found is the Spotted Redshank, a medium small wader:

Here is a Glossy Ibis, also showing a bit of red.

There were lots of other birds that we saw as well, including one Black Kite. It was right by a set of sign boards about raptors:

The site has very many informative sign boards. We had the patience to read some, but otherwise they were overwhelming.

The rain had given up and we happily wandered the birding site with our cameras out. But just after we gave up and toddled back to the lodge, the skies opened. The ground at the lodge was quickly saturated, giving us flashbacks to Spain. Our plan for tomorrow was to go to Saintes Maries and then to follow the "Digue a la Mer" which is a sand dike bike path, through to the Salin de Giraud. That would have been a quite easy 33 km. But now we are having to consider a 63 km detour slog on bigger roads. The forecast for tomorrow looks very wet, but the lady at the lodge just told me that conditions change rapidly here. We'll wait until tomorrow to decide!

Today's ride: 7 km (4 miles)
Total: 1,607 km (998 miles)

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