![looking across the Lake of Menteith to Inchmahome](https://burnedthumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_0268-1024x683.jpg)
We always try to go to Inchmahome in spring to see the bluebells. They can be up to three weeks behind us here at a much lower level, so it’s a guess when the best time is, but this year, I think we hit peak bluebell.
![a clump of native bluebells, very dark blue](https://burnedthumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/bluebells-1024x683.jpg)
They are everywhere under the trees
![a pool of bluebells](https://burnedthumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/bluebell-sea-1024x683.jpg)
There has been a flood. The rising blue
fills the hollow space between the trees,
and washes over hillocks with a strange
still completeness, as if the sea had learned
to flow uphill.
(from my poem Inundation, in Wherever We Live Now )
I took the camera and tried a few experiments. It was a beautiful day, and we saw peacock and orange tip butterflies, swans and mallards, a great crested grebe (the first time for here), and best of all, the osprey.
![an osprey circling](https://burnedthumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/osprey3.jpg)
There were wrens, robins and a thrush singing, and we saw the first swallows as we came home. If you were to celebrate Beltane, that would have been the day to do it!
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