Catskills Photography took this photo of a female (or possibly a juvenile) common merganser on the Neversink River over the weekend.

This sleek-billed creature is a duck, though it does all sorts of un-duck-like things. The merganser eats fish, makes its nest in a tree, and doesn't make a habit of quacking; the only sound the merganser makes is a rough croak when alarmed or looking for a mate.

Though not seen as often as the ubiquitous mallard, the merganser is fairly common on Catskills creeks and rivers, where it dives for small trout and aquatic insects. In May and June, the females will seek out holes in tree-trunks to lay their eggs. Some will lay eggs in another female's nest, or even the nest of a wood duck, leaving the resident mother with an adoptive family that she will raise happily along with her own.

To catch its swift prey, the merganser is equipped with a set of sharp "teeth" -- not true teeth, but pointed spikes made up of the same substance as the merganser's bill.

Colchester supervisor Ted Fonda, who was elected to the post just six months ago, has resigned.

An employee at the Colchester town clerk's office told the Watershed Post that Fonda turned in a letter of resignation yesterday. The town board will be meeting tonight to accept his resignation.

Update, 6pm: If we'd done our homework this morning, we'd have realized the Walton Reporter beat us to this story. Fonda, who is 73, told the Reporter yesterday that he was resigning because of health issues:

Fonda listed "high blood pressure, loss of weight, lack of sleep" as reasons for his departure. "My doctor said I could quit, or quit having him for my doctor," he said.

We spoke to Fonda this afternoon. Fonda said that his brief tenure as town supervisor had been incredibly stressful, in part because he had fierce opposition from the Colchester town board.

The great nature writer John Burroughs once wrote with curmudgeonly spleen that the automobile was a "demon," able to "seek out even the most secluded nook or corner of the forest and befoul it with noise and smoke."

That was before Henry Ford gave him one. Local writer Will Nixon wrote in the Woodstock Times in 1998:

...Henry Ford didn’t respond by calling Burroughs a Luddite, tree-hugger or environmental wacko. Instead, the savvy industrialist, who was also an avid birder, sent Burroughs a fan letter followed by a Model T.

...one giant leap for newtkind.

Photographer Christopher Mooney took this shot of a red-spotted newt, called an "eft" while it is in the bright red, land-dwelling juvenile phase of its life, on a country road in Bovina Center on April 21.

Most amphibians have two life stages: adult and larva. The red-spotted newt, which spends the beginning and the end of its life in the water, has three. Adult red-spotted newts are sedentary beasts, spending most of their impressive 12- to 15-year lifespan in and around one small pond. But the flashy young efts ramble around on dry land for several years before settling down to become aquatic, olive-green adults.

Naturalist William Needham, the author of a series of articles called "The Hiker's Notebook," writes of the newt's prodigious navigational skills: