Snakes and ideas

Spending a few weeks in rural France, I find not for the first time, how difficult it is to get any ideas here for serious work. It is probably a fear that anything in the slightest exotic is apt to nudge in the direction of croûtes, a word the French have for lousy paintings, the sort of stuff produced for tourists. I can record things that interest me in a drawing or watercolour but I find I have no further use for them. On this occasion, I have come up with something that may do for a print, arising from the sight of a tree full of a dozen or so magpies.

There must be a collective noun for such a gathering but it is odd that I should have seen it in France, for I have just read in a local journal, that magpies have declined here by 61% in the last twelve years. The cause seems to have been predation by crows that raid their nests. In Scotland I suspect they are on the increase. Walking over Calton Hill, in Edinburgh, I see so many flying about that I fear for the nests of songbirds.

The birds I see here are much the same as in Scotland with a few additions. Black red starts are common and I have seen a male with the tail feathers spread to a bright orange fan. It is, of course, the mating season but I have never seen this before. I am pleased to see nightingales, so much a presence in Romantic literature, although plumage-wise nothing special, unlike the hoopoe that I have spotted occasionally.

But this year my most striking encounters have been with snakes, all the same species. In French they are couleuvres verts et jaunes, in English, western whipsnakes. They are not venomous but they can be aggressive if cornered and will rear like a cobra and bite hard. I read that they are fast moving, good climbers, with a diet of rodents, lizards, eggs and young birds. They will also eat other snakes including vipers.

My first viewing wasn’t much: a slim tail protruding from a woodpile. The next was more interesting. I saw a head above some old fencing stacked against a wall, with the short, black forked tongue flickering. As I watched, the head withdrew, but when I returned a day later, the snake was stretched out across the fencing, catching the sun. It didn’t even move when getting as close as I dared, I took a photograph. My third viewing came when I lifted a log and found a hibernator asleep beneath. I left it uncovered and it was still motionless when I returned with a camera.

They are beautifully marked creatures but I do not see them making any appearance in my visual work.