It is so green! All the leaves are fully out now and the grass blades are high enough for the first silage cuts in the fields. Against this verdant palate wild flowers trail swathes of colour on the verges. Bicycling up the Whinlatter pass our ultrafit Visitor Centre ladies have been counting the different species –white lace Cow Parsley, blue eyed Germander Speedwell, palest mauve Ladies Smock, yellow poppy, red campion, starry Stitchwort, Wood Avens, Violets, blue Bugle, Purple Vetch, garlic Ransoms and Jack-by-the-Hedge, Buttercups and Daisies, pink Herb Robert, tiny Mignonette and more. It’s worth being out of breath (they say) just to draw in all the different scents of early Summer.

Over all the lighter scents of these the heavy sweet overblown perfume of the May and Rowan flowers wafts on the updrafts to the higher mountain slopes mixed with the hot coconut smell of gorse.

Watching for signs of movement on the nest the watchers enjoy spending some of their time sniffing the breezes but do our ospreys appreciate this nasal bouquet whilst sitting for hour after hour incubating their eggs? Do they actually have a sense of smell? Researchers think it doubtful, as their olfactory organs seem fairly rudimentary. As smell is so closely linked with taste this might explain why ospreys are happy eating any sort of fish – salt or fresh water – and why Mrs. No-ring has no favourite fish on her menu. She certainly accepts every one her husband brings up with equal gusto so for all we know perhaps they all taste just the same to her, but obviously as delicious as each other.