Above: A screenshot from state senator John Bonacic's website, urging constituents in the 42nd District to sign a petition to repeal New York State's new gun control law.

With the ink hardly dry on New York State's new gun control law, New York state senator John Bonacic has already begun a petition drive to get the law repealed. Bonacic was one of 18 Republican state senators to vote against the bill.

Bonacic's district, the 42nd, includes all of Sullivan County as well as parts of Delaware, Ulster and Orange Counties.

On January 16, the day after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed New York State's gun control legislation into law, Bonacic urged his constituents to sign a petition in support of repealing the law:

A 22-year-old solo pilot flying a single-engine Piper Cherokee Warrior was forced to make an emergency landing in a field in the Sullivan County town of Bethel on Monday, according to a statement released recently by New York State Police.

Brent Kozura, a resident of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, was flying from Rutland Regional Airport in Vermont, en route to Schuylkill County Airport in Pottsville, when he began having mechanical problems. The plane was diverted to Sullivan County Airport, but Kozura was unable to land at the airport, and made an emergency landing in a field near Horseshoe Lake Road and Davis Road.

The airplane was not damaged in the landing, and no one was injured. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident.

It's true: On any given weekend in the Catskills, you can't swing a cat without hitting a random celebrity. Looking glam as ever here despite the candid snapshot is Tyra Banks, supermodel and host of America's Next Top Model, spotted by a sharp-eyed Watershed Post reader at the Phoenicia Diner last weekend.

Banks may have famously invented "smizing" -- the art of smiling only with your eyes -- but in this photo, she's clearly got her whole face involved. (At any rate, she seems to be having more fun up here than Justin Bieber did on a recent unscheduled pit stop.)

Why spend all day drilling holes in dead trees in search of hidden larvae, when you can stop in at the friendly neighborhood all-you-can-eat suet buffet? Watershed Post reader Barbara Small got this fantastic closeup of a woodpecker near her house in Margaretville last week.

The Catskill Mountains are home to several different species of woodpecker, including that jaunty, noisy Woody Woodpecker-looking species, the pileated woodpecker.

The one in this photo looks to us like a male hairy woodpecker, Picoides villosus -- a dead ringer for the very similar downy woodpecker, except for its larger bill. The Bedford Audubon Society has some tips on telling the two look-alike species apart:

The Downy’s bill is always shorter then the length of its head. When foraging on a tree branch, the Downy seems to place its head on a 45-degree angle to the branch. Another good field mark used in order to tell the two apart is the presence of black barring on the outer white tail feathers of the Downy.