Jonathan Kemp; A naturalist in the south of France

                                                             A Montpellier snake (Couleuvre de Montpellier).   A week or so ago a friend in the Pyrenees Oriental was weeding her strawberry patch in the garden and sat down to rest on a spare pile of plastic netting, fortunately quite a large pile. She suddenly felt movement under the pile and leapt up, and to her horror realised that there was a very large snake entwined in the netting, fortunately unable to react as it was so entangled in the net. Calling her husband they tried to free the animal, for which effort he was painfully bitten on the hand. They knew perfectly well that the safe place to handle (possibly venomous) snake was c...

                                                                  This Spring has been very cool and rainy, clearly having an impact on the insect populations. I have been wondering how troublesome this has been for the m any bird species that change their diet from the winter diets of seeds and grains to one of calorie rich insects, fruit and, later in summer, berries.   This is especially necessary when it comes to feeding their chicks whose digestive systems will be geared up to digest caterpillars and insects to fuel their extraordinary growth rates . Blue tit chicks ( poussin Mésange bleue ) have just three weeks to quadruple their size, grow the feathers and...