Birding photo hike at Croton Point Park.

Birds seen along a walk along the Hudson River in May 2022.

Seagull finding a clam along Croton River, dropping it on pavement at Echo Boat Launch for a nice meal.

Photo gallery of local birds so far in 2020

Photo gallery of local birds

Photo gallery of local hawks often seen (and heard!) where I live

Photo gallery of bald eagles and various hawks seen locally over the last year

A collection of birds seen during a run on an unseasonably warm winter day.

Photo gallery of bald eagles and various hawks seen locally over the last year

A poem on stargazing

A short story about a man trying to relax with his thoughts along a busy path.

I made the trek up to Minnewaska to get in a nice long (and hilly) run. I brought my camera along to get some scenic shots along the way.

Today had perfect Spring weather; low 70s with a pleasant downriver breeze. It was too hard to resist, so I went for a walk along Croton Landing park overlooking Haverstraw Bay (aka widest part of the Hudson River). Unfortunately I only had my phone on me. Its camera is less forgiving than my normal point-and-shoot, so this is the only one that came out well.

In honor of real Spring weather today, I decided to scan in one of my favorite photos from back in the day (smudged processing timestamp, but early 90s is a safe guess). It was taken by the side of my house growing up with a simple point-and-shoot camera. I've just done some minor contrast and color correction in post-processing.

I've been going through stacks of old photos. This is a small field near where I grew up. Of course, now it's mostly covered in houses. It was originally taken in 1994 with a simple point-and-shoot. I've adjusted the color, contrast, etc. with Photoshop and then applied a watercolor effect.

I went for a run this afternoon and hit some light rain. On one downhill stretch I happened to look up and saw this, so I paused my running app and took a shot of the offending clouds.

I finally got a chance to do some quality snowshoeing earlier this week at Teatown, covering the Hidden Valley and Overlook trails for a solid two hour trek.

Last summer during a heat wave I dropped a snow photo, so I suppose in yet-another arctic wave it's time for me to throw on a beach image. Shot from the beach with a storm about to roll in:

We've had two snow storms almost back to back (and cold weather in between), but the weather is supposed to warm up again later this week. As such, I wanted to get out to a local park to do some snowshoeing… especially after the horrible lack of snow we had last year (when it rained whenever we did get any). Panoramic shot during my snowshoe hike through Teatown Lake Reservation:

I'm overdue for a visit back to one of my favorite stomping grounds (quite literally; it has a lot of nice walking trails): Lake Minnewaska. I was going over some old photos and came across this one from a hike I took with my sister almost a decade ago.

Given that we're now in the thick of summer around here, I thought it'd be a fun time to revisit a shot I took a number of winters ago. I switched it to black and white and adjusted the brightness/contrast. Taken at a small local park on the Hudson River. <img src=”/img/2013/P1000104bw-e1372721169936.jpg”” class="img-fluid” title="Winter river snow shadows (2008), black and white. © 2013 Peter Wetzel.“>

Nice day for a run/hike through a local preserve, although I'm not sure my allergies were the biggest fan of my decision.

While it's not technically spring yet, we did have our first nice day of the year the other day (sunny and high 60s? woot!). While the temperature fell back to normal over the weekend, at least it's been sunny. About six years ago one of my neighbors gave me one of her potted plants. Supposedly it flowered, but she had yet to see it and had given up hope that it ever would.

Today was a nice (if cool and windy) fall day, so I took a stroll along the river and snapped a few photos. There were a number of windsurfers and kite surfers; I think they actually outnumbered people walking in the park along the shore :) First up is one with no zoom and lots of glare! Next is a full zoom (10x optical) on some of the windsurfers in the middle of the river; it's really wide there, as it's actually part of a bay within the river.

There is a pair of red-tailed hawks that frequent the air space (and occasionally high tree branches) outside of my window at work. This is not about them; I just mention them because they are really fucking cool. The first time I saw one of them he was on a light pole in our parking lot. He was shredding a squirrel while people walked to their cars below him. That was actually kind of gross.