Yesterday

Yesterday is the most annoying day of the week. Yesterday there was a Barred Warbler here. Yesterday’s yesterday and that warbler was a Greenish. Today, and the birding at Blakeney Point was so dire that when the sub-adult Spoonbill woke up, it flew away…

There comes, bundled in with life and associated life stuff, an irresistible urge to compare and contrast and reflect. Compare this unending grey with the sun and sky blue of the same place a year ago. 

Contrast the airless atmosphere and birdless air with that of last year: last year had Whinchats, Wheatears, Yellow Wagtails and Lesser Whitethroats. This year had several Swallows kicking around the old lifeboat house and two summer plumaged Grey Plover on the mudflats that appeared to have walked straight out of a linocut. Reflect on the three miles of shingle and sand you walked to get here, and how much longer that feels without avian distractions.

Think about how nothing ventured, nothing gained is fair enough, yet something ventured, nothing gained is most unfair. It's out of your control like some cosmic unfairness hard coded into the grain of the world, yet the reality is that most un-cosmic thing, the wind. The wind that just happens to always be in the wrong direction at the right time.

Don't think about the Spanish Sparrow relocated at Landguard Point.