Dear Mark,
I've lived in France (northern Alps) off and on for about 15-20 years, but
now live in Seattle. I've birded mostly in France for many years, but also
in Italy, Spain and the Balkan countries. The generally accepted best
European field guide is the Mullarney et al. book that I think Dennis
suggested to you. Others have also given you many good suggestions, but I
would also recommend that you acquire Nigel Wheatley's Where to Watch Birds
in Europe and Russia (Princeton 2000). I found it to be most useful,
especially during a fairly recent trip I took to Spain, the country
generally recognized as the best birding in Europe. For France, you've noted
the Camargue/Bouches du Rhone area, but I might also suggest that La Dombes
region near Lyon is also a really great area for nesting water and land
birds of all sorts, as is the Po delta and around Venice generally. You
might wish to get ahold of some documentation on the French national
parks...those in the southeast are accessible, well documented and have
nesting vultures. I got my life Lammergeier in the Vanoise National Park
last year. There are also a number of really good shore and water birding
areas on the western Mediterranean coast of Italy, and the area in and
around the Guadalquivir River in southern Spain is truly spectacular. At
Tariffa, quite near to Gibraltar, I was transfixed for hours on end in mid
April watching the raptors and other large migrants coming across the strait
from Africa, though by June all these migrants will have passed through.
Most of these areas are cited with directions, etc. in the Wheately book.
Hope you have a great trip.
Brien Meilleur

>From: Mark Egger <m.egger at comcast.net>
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Subject: [Tweeters] RFI: birding in France & N. Italy
>Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:00:21 -0700
>
>I know this is way off-topic and would be better addressed to a European
>bird list-serve, but I highly value the opinions of my fellow Tweets, so
>here goes. My family and I will be visiting France (mostly the NW coast in
>E. Brittany, the Dordogne region, and Provence (including the Alps) and N
>Italy (Tuscany, Umbria, and a bit of Venice). We will be there from late
>June through most of July, travelling in the order listed above. While I've
>birded fairly extensively in North and South America, this will be my first
>trip out of the New World! Can't wait for my life Stock Dove! :-)
>
>I am interested to hear from anyone who has travelled in these regions at
>that time of year and can suggest some awesome places to maximize numbers
>of species within a relatively few locations (neither my wife nor daughter
>are terribly into birding -- one too many sewage lagoons, I fear). I have
>already discovered the Camargue area in Provence, which seems to be the
>Malheur NWR of France, and the Maremma region in Italy, but I'd still love
>to hear other's thoughts, recommendations, strategies, etc. Please reply
>directly to me, unless you think such info would be of interest to the
>group. Speaking of field guides, I took Dennis Paulsen's advice & picked up
>the recent "Birds of Europe" by Mullarney et al. -- which has VERY nice
>plates (I keep staring at the beautifully executed Sylvidae pages) and has
>a lot of information packed into a fairly small size. Any recommendations
>for a supplementary guide and/or a good source of voice recordings? I do so
>much of my birding by voice here, and I'd like to study up aurally on the
>European species, so I'm not completely overwhelmed.
>
>Thanks much in advance,
>
>Mark
>--
>Mark Egger
>Seattle, WA
>USA
>mailto:m.egger at comcast.net
>
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