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still a loon and no migratory ducks
Sunday, October 26 2025
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
I got up late and piddled away a fair amount of time just drinking coffee and noodling around on my laptop before getting around to doing something, which in this case was to finally do that carpentry work on the upstairs deck. The four twelve foot six by sixes all needed to be stood up to form pillars, a task that has seemed dangerous and otherwise easy to screw up. But this morning I just went for it, bolting down a stout steel base and then driving a very large lag bolt down into the top end of the posts. After attaching ropes to this screw (and also, with a calculated amount of slack, to a branch of a sugar maple just east of the deck, I hoisted the post up and then banged it into the steel base it needed to rest in. I also temporarily tied rope around the base of the post to secure it to the railing and then tied the end of the ropes running to that topmost lag bolt to various places to keep the 100 pound post vertical. I'd previously notched out a corner in the railing for the post to live in, but to actually get it into that notch, the top rail of the railing had to be temporarily disassembled. But before too long I had the post very close to where I wanted it (and also reasonably secure against wind or other forces that might want to knock it down).
As I worked, I listened mostly to a country music radio station. I've noticed that such stations are playing more songs with female vocalists than they had been.
Having made some progress with the upstairs deck project, I celebrated by
taking the dogs for an admittedly pathetic walk to the lake and back. While I was down there, I saw a large bird out on the water looking to be behaving like a loon. But he was so advanced in his winter plumage that he didn't really look like a loon any more (and I didn't have a camera capable of snapping a zoomed-in picture of him). I assumed he must've been Throckmorton the Loon, though his persistent absence earlier in the weekend suggested to me that perhaps he has been visiting other lakes, which implies he is perfectly capable of flight and has just decided (using the loon version of free will) to stay in his summer habitat unusually late. Perhaps the unusual absence of ducks (aside from that one mallard three weeks ago) is also related to Throckmorton's decision to linger. Maybe loons do not tolerate migrating interlopers.
By the mid afternoon, I'd cleaned up the cabin and was ready to begin my drive back to Hurley. But since I'd only managed to get 106 miles of range into the Bolt's battery, I decided to drive home through Albany so I could get a quick charge. The Electrify America chargers were operational again at the Walmart near Crossgates Mall, and, since that is an easy place to get to and from, that was where I went.
After letting the dogs roam around the parking lot for about ten minutes, I put them back in the car and then went into the Walmart to waste another 20 minutes or so. By the time I got back to the car, it had 120 miles of range, which was more than enough to drive the 55 miles left of mostly Thruway I had to drive.
Back home in Hurley, Gretchen had been on something of a refrigerator-cleaning jihad and had made various things, including some sort of Polish noodle dish and a couple mushroom-based burgers I'd bought and then forgotten about. I had a couple burgers for dinner, and they were pretty good, so it looks like I will be having a couple more for lunch tomorrow.
An Orwellian solar-powered surveillance pod in the Walmart parking lot. Soft difficult-to-place classical music can be heard from the loudspeakers. There are at least two of these pods near the Electrify America chargers. Click to enlarge.
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