I walked around Cutler Park today for the first time in several weeks. Just when I left my building something big flew like a bat out of hell towards the p0nd. My first reaction was “pigeon” but it wasn’t. I think it was a falcon, maybe a merlin. By the time I got halfway along the first side of the pond I had seen chickadee, titmouse, bluejay, and downy woodpecker. A duck, maybe a common merganser but I couldn’t be sure, flew away towards the river. When I walked out to the river a duck, maybe the same one, flew away around the bend. Swans and a pair of hooded mergs were on the part of the river I could see. That was about all the birds for the walk.
I did some more on the step stool in the evening, all the router work on the rails to hold the steps, and rounding the outside edges of the rails with the rounding tool that I think of as being like a carrot peeler. That should be the hardest precision woodworking of the whole job.