Last minute trip to the Camargue

Situated in the South of France, the Camargue is the largest river delta of Western Europe. It is enclosed by two arms of the Rhône and the Mediterranean Sea in the south. This huge area covers a variety of habitats:  marshes, lagoons, beaches, dunes, salt and fresh water. But perhaps most interestingly, the Camargue is also a very important refuge for migrating, wintering and breeding birds and today most of that area is protected and became a national nature reserve.

In august my girlfriend, my parents-in-law and I left Belgium for a 2-week vacation in the Provence in France. We resided in a small chalet in the Luberon, a 3 hour drive northeast of the Camargue. Since this was primarily a family holiday and it is always better to keep your girlfriend satisfied, I could only leave them alone for a few days and visit the Camargue on my own.
Since I hadn’t had the time to prepare this vacation very thoroughly, I didn’t know much about what to expect from the area.

Like most nature photographers I prefer to photograph in the morning and in the evening, so I left my crappy hotel room after only a few hours of sleep, for my first day of photography in the Camargue.
Since I didn’t know the region, I spent most of that day looking for good photographic opportunities for the next days.  Mas d’Agon, a small marsh, north of Vaccarès, seemed a very good place to photograph herons, egrets, waders and terns and I decided to keep that for the next morning.
At around 5.30pm it was time to go the “Parc ornitologique Pont De Gau”, situated northwest of Saintes Maries-de-la-Mer. Pont De Gau is actually a bird park, which has caged birds, but every evening at around 6.30pm a real spectacle takes place here. Greater Flamingos, the national pride of the Camargue, gather from all over the area to feed on krill that is thrown in the small ponds.  “Photographers, get ready to take great flight shots when these majestic birds fly in and land!”
It is strange to see that these flamingos now allow you to come close, were everywhere else in the Camargue I found them difficult to approach.