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wood ducks on Woodworth Lake
Friday, May 5 2023
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
Not long after fixing the code repository for our biggest web application, the one whose history I'd inadvertently junked up several weeks abck with merge to an unrelated code base, Joe the Lead Developer reported that it was already junked up again. This time, Joe was clearly the culprit because he hadn't reset his local repository as radically as required. So I fixed the repository again, musing as I did so, "I'm getting good at this." Later, though, I struggled with a seemingly unfixable problem caused, it turned out (when properly debugged), by a slightly-misspelled variable name. By the end of the workday, I was feeling confident enough to hit the road an hour early so I could get to the Adirondack cabin well before sunset. Again, Gretchen wouldn't be coming, but the dogs would.
I had to piss so bad by the time I got off at the Pattersonville exit that I was doing a little dance in my seat and flexing my arm muscles rhythmically. When I stopped at the usual place (which is always 42.897244N, 74.096834W), I immediately ran around to the passenger side of the car, opened the doors for the dogs, and fell to my knees next to the car (shielded somewhat by the open car doors) and started pissing. I made a similar maneuver after getting my usual Burger King order at the edge of the parking lot at 43.03519N, 74.34306W. I've used car doors to shield me in the past when pissing, but getting on your knees increases one's privacy further and also causes less piss to spatter in the car, since you can direct it at a low angle in ways that minimize both spattering and visibility.
After doing the usual cabin startup work (which involved starting a fire in the woodstove and feasting on the Burger King food with the dogs), I made myself a gin & tonic and walked down to Woodworth Lake. I found a fair amount of wildlife activity, including three male wood ducks a hundred feet or so north of our dock as well as what appeared to be a common merganser near Joel's dock. I could hear some predatory bird making a whistling sound, and when it eventually flew across the lake, I thought it might be an immature bald eagle. But later looking at some grainy photos I'd taken, I decided it was an osprey [something the specifics of its call later confirmed].
The dock this evening. Click to enlarge.
Two of the three male wood ducks.
A grainy photo of a common merganser.
A grainy photo of an osprey.
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