Tuesday July 29, 2014 Jenner CA.
I could see two boats with biologists aboard as I put my boat in the water at Jenner this morning around 11:30AM.
I paddled out to where they were and this was my view of them as I approached.
These guys were collecting samples of what the fish might be eating in the estuary.
I asked one question
As it was, they were just moving to a new location down river, so I was only able to ask one question.
That was, do you know of any fish being put into the estuary above normal, as there are a lot of, fish eating type birds, in the estuary right now, eating fish, that aren’t normally here this time of year?
The answer was no, not to their knowledge.
Since they were headed down stream and I was headed up stream, we passed and I continued up stream to the old redwood log graveyard, where I stopped and watched and rested.
Biologists boat breaks down
A short time later, both of the biologists boats came by and the guys in the raft, suddenly just stopped in the water across the river from me. Seems the raft boat’s engine must of stopped as they hooked a rope onto it and pulled it up the river from this point.
Big boat hooks a rope onto the smaller boat and tows it on up the river where their work continues.
These guys and gals are collecting specimens of things the fish are eating near the bottom of the river and along the shoreline. They’ve been doing this every week or so this year in the estuary working along with the fish tracking guys. The fish tracking guys have stopped tracking for a bit, but will start again in September is what they told me. Seems they have a lot of data to check out and I know they likely need a little break from the river as they’ve been doing it almost everyday for almost a couple mouths now.
They must have a lot of data to analyze, by now.
Birds across the river
There were some birds resting across the river from me with this bovine.
I continued on up the river
I continued on up the river taking my time and stopping often as I went up the shoreline.
This is one of the places I stopped along the way, dead deer gulch, I call it.
I stopped here for a bit to let my eyes close for awhile, before continuing on up the river a bit more.
Great Egrets
I sat under the trees in this spot, I’ll call Rockwall. Note the two little white spots up in the trees, I saw as I pulled out from the spot.
Going back in a bit, I saw that the two white spots where great egrets and here is a picture of one of them sitting up in the trees preening.
Turned around here
I paddled just a little further up the river to this spot, before turning around and starting back down the river. That’s the highway one bridge, at Bridge Haven.
This was my view as I paddled back down the river, as I’m approaching rat nest beach, just ahead.
Birds below Paddy’s rock
I saw some birds across the river near Paddy’s rock, so I crossed over to check them out.
There were these two merganser ducks resting on the beach.
And these cormorants with more merganser ducks, just down the beach a bit from Paddy’s rock.
Paddled on down to the west end of Penny Island
I continued paddling on down the river, going down the back channel of Penny Island to the west end where there were these white pelicans resting there in the shallows.
Tern has a fish
There were also some terns there screeching away. Note one them has a little fish in it’s beak. When one of the terns has a small fish in it’s beak, it fly’s around with it, screeching, maybe telling the others about where it caught the fish?
Rivers mouth area
I left the terns screeching away and headed on down to the river’s mouth and sat in my boat in the middle of it. It was high tide and lots of ocean water was coming into the river as I sat there in my boat in this spot looking out into the Pacific ocean through the river’s mouth.
There were a lot of harbor seals on the beach, resting and taking it easy, like me.
I watched for about an hour, then headed on back to the take out area, where I was off the water around three PM and went on home for the day.