Medicine...

The rain today was steady and unrelenting. I tried to summon some enthusiasm for an afternoon walk, but there was no response. Instead I put on a long face and just wallowed in despond.

A good remedy for this kind of nonsense is a trip down Memory Lane. Unfortunately I'm old enough that it's become rather a long lane, but I mostly stuck to fairly recent history. I opened up the laptop and hunted down my old NQS photos. If you are relatively new to this blog you may not know that it had two previous incarnations. The first ran for nearly two years from mid-2008, and the second began in the summer of 2010 and came to a grinding halt in late 2013. The old NQS photos still survive on my hard drive, and I've just spent a pleasant hour browsing through them all...

When the weather is dire and the birding slow, it is all too easy to focus on the direness and slowness, and forget how temporary it actually is. My years of birding in this part of the world have been extraordinarily rewarding, and although a few weeks may seem like aeons, in reality I have rarely needed to wait too long between birdy events of note. I was quite surprised to be reminded just how many decent birds there have been. There are several group photos too, and in a way they are better than the bird pics, evoking the event, the buzz.

So, a bit of a random selection, but here's a drop of my medicine...

Amazing flock of 20 (or was it 21? Looks like 20 in the photo) Glossy Ibis alongside the Otter Estuary at Budleigh Salterton in September 2010

Devon Glossy Ibis watchers

A bit later that year there was a nationwide influx of Lapland Buntings, and we hoped we'd get a share. Eventually it happened. One super-elusive bird in about a million acres of stubble above Axe Cliff. Jammily, a few of us got it on the deck...

October 2010 - Axe Cliff Lapland Bunting

Happy Lap watchers. Crouching slightly: Larry (see below)

Maybe it seems inappropriate to pick autumn birds as a tonic for my malaise? A good point. Thankfully I was able to find something which very much fitted in with the calendar. However, it goes back a lot further than the above...

Late January/early February 1989. Norfolk, W London, the Northeast. An eclectic mix of species. My eye is drawn to the Smew count, the Ruddy Ducks and the Yellow-legged Herring Gulls (a sign of things to come!) - how the birding scene has changed! Oh, and the Cormorant thing.

The Cormorant thing drew a crowd. Crouching slightly: Larry. Tall, underwhelmed bloke in the foreground has no idea a blog will one day emerge.

So there we go. It cheered me up somewhat. Loads more where that came from!