Generally speaking, I have an awful memory for specifics. I hardly remember what I wore this morning or instructions that the girls at home left for me or that I have something on the stove while I got distracted by something else that caught my attention. Sometimes this faulty memory is so poor that I realise that I need to do something super important just to scratch my head a few seconds later trying to recollect what exactly it was and it takes me several minutes of retracing my thoughts to figure out what I forgot.

But then again, I have a great memory for specifics. I do remember absolutely useless pieces of information – for instance, what did I shoot on a golfing round on 29th and 30th Jan 2012, a hole-by-hole and shot-by-shot replay of my golf round of 25th Nov 2018 and unimportant things like these.

For someone with a Jekyll-and-Hyde memory like mine, photographing birds is a bit of a challenge, a world of two polar opposites – absolutely nightmarish when it comes to recalling bird-calls and a breeze when it comes to recalling where all I have spotted a particular species before, if at all. The former can be tackled quite often by ensuring that you are in the company of fellow-travellers who are great at identifying bird through their sounds. The latter, however, is not something that you can lean on others for guidance, no one else can help here.

The last time I saw the Rufous-vented Yuhina was in the zig-zag roads between Zuluk and Thambi View Point in East Sikkim. Unfortunately, that was a time that the fog was rapidly rolling in and I couldn’t really get a decent shot of the bird. Luck and the weather was on my side this time, though. And my selective-memory that screamed at me to not miss him this time around.