During my vacation with friends close to Cannes in southern France, my priority was of course to catch up and spend some quality time with my friend group from university. Apart from my birding trip to the Coussouls de Crau, I couldn’t stop birding when I was outside.
A highlight was spotting two Yelkouan Shearwaters with the scope from the shore. Way more common, and thus significantly less exciting, were the Yellow-legged Gulls. They did prove quite entertaining however with their sheep- and cat-like calls.
A Cirl Bunting in the neighborhood was also nice to watch. It was singing frequently, which made it easy to locate on the treetops. This species is way more common in southern Europe than in central Germany where I saw it recently, but is spreading northwards at a rapid rate due to higher temperatures.
The rocky hills right above the coast were particularly good areas. Common Swifts and European Crag Martins were the most common species, but I also saw a few Pallid Swifts. Or rather, I should say I identified a few and might have seen way more, I still find it a challenge to confidently identify these birds in many situations.
I was particularly excited to see a pair of Alpine Swifts. I haven’t seen this unusually pretty swift species many times their rather large size combined with the pied markings make for a quite impressive beast.
There are quite a few species of warbler that occur in the scrubby coastal vegetation, but I only managed to get good views of the widespread and common Sardinian Warbler. I hoped to see Western Orphean and Western Subalpine, but only had probable views of the latter. Compensation came in the form of (brief) views of Blue Rock-Thrush.
Although I didn’t think of this area – which is rather known for its coast and cities – as a place to go birding, I was positively surprised. The area offered a good balance between lacking anything of interest in birding terms and being very exciting with a large number of specials. This prevented me from being frustrated by the lack of good birds around (even when the purpose of the vacation was not birding), while at the same time there not being too much to discover and distract from the reason why I went on the holidays in the first place.
It is an interesting area for birds, as Luca so nicely reminds us. I went there on a brief business trip 40 years ago and heard my first scops owl calling outside my hotel. I went out and imitated it (not difficult), and was rewarded when it flew onto a wire so I managed to get a good look at it. I’ve heard many since, but not seen many, as they are so elusive and difficult to find when roosting.
“my priority was of course to catch up and spend some quality time with my friend group from university” – you need to consider your priorities, Luca… ?