In search of birds

Today was rather cool, windy, and rainy.  So we opted to head to the Camargue (the marshy land at the delta of the Rhone River), to look for birds.  As we headed south of here, the rain lessened a bit and we started seeing some interesting birds.

The big etang (lagoon) in the Camargue had white caps, but there we spotted our first flamingos of the season.  A few were out in the wind, with the white caps, while some had come closer to shore to feed in a more protected area.

Soon after seeing the flamingos, we stopped at the adjacent La Capeliere, a bird refuge.  We walked along their paths, and looked out through the blinds they had built along the way.  I wish I could say we saw lots of different birds.  We saw probably less than 10 different bird species, BUT we heard all kinds of wonderful bird songs, especially along the wooded section of the path.  So rather than bird watching, we were generally bird listening.  The only bird we could identity by call was the cuckoo.  We really tried to find the birds that were singing all the wonderful songs, but almost all of them evaded our detection.  We felt quite lucky to not get rained on during our walk through the refuge.