Sunday February 22, 2015 Jenner CA.
When I woke this morning I could see the wind was blowing the redwood tree outside my skylight rather on the hard side. I checked with the weather people and they said the wind at Jenner would get up to fifteen miles an hour. I can handle that and maybe they’d be wrong and the wind would be less.
I headed on down to Jenner and put my boat in the water. The wind wasn’t too bad, maybe five miles and hour. I headed across to Penny Island and then worked my way up the river.
Cormorants
I passed by these cormorants by Paddy’s rock. So far, there aren’t as many cormorants as I expected with the hatchery fish being released into the river.This might be because it rained hard and the river has been up, which might have swept a lot of the hatchery smolt into the ocean already. I haven’t talked with any fishermen lately to see if they have been having trouble keeping the smolt off their hooks. The smolt are a problem getting onto hooks when one is trying to catch steelhead and when they are in the river in the thousands, they can be a problem for the fishermen.
Some cormorants and a seagull or two resting on the gravel shoreline.
Geese
I moved to that side of the river and continued on up where I ran into these geese resting on the shoreline.
Great white egrets
I could see these two great white egrets preening as I paddled along.
One of the egrets jumped into the air and landed near me as I watched. This egret is just landing.
I passed by this pair of mallard ducks feeding along the shoreline.
I stopped there and watched things for a bit. This egret was preening and keeping an eye on me.
Almost missed this river otter
After awhile, I crossed over the river to the opposite shore and paddled over to the muskrat nest beach area where I sat for awhile, then continued on down the south side of the river where I saw a little black thing moving in the water which I recognized as a river otter. I followed it around for a bit, but it only showed it’s head and was coy. Eventually, I lost it and continued on down the river.
Turkey vultures up on the hill
Some movement caught my eye up on the hill above eagle’s landing which turned out to be some turkey vultures getting some sun.
The Hippie Trash Collector
Just past the vultures, I saw a guy with a raft and it turned out to be Ken. He was picking up trash on the river. We shoot the bull for awhile and I took a picture of what he calls his Hippie Trash Collector. I was trying to recall if he meant his craft or him? :O)
It has a gas motor on it and looks like just the thing to pick up trash on the river. With the recent rains and the river rising up, lots of trash came down the river. Thanks for helping pick some of it up Ken.
Osprey
I left Ken at it and continued on down the river where I saw a larger bird on the up river end of Penny Island. Just as I was going to take it’s picture, it jumped into the air. It turned out to be an osprey.
Lot’s of bufflehead ducks
There were also over fifty bufflehead ducks feeding in the middle of the river just in front of the visitor center.
River’s mouth is open
I was thinking of going down to the river’s mouth, but the wind was up and I was already a bit on the tired out side, so I just looked down to the open river’s mouth and took this picture in that direction from Penny Island.
From there I went on in for the day and headed on home.
Checking the van’s dash lights
One of the things I needed to do was find out how many of the dash lights in my van worked and how many didn’t so I could get some new ones. Since the instrument cluster was out, they were all exposed, so I got my meter out and measured them to see what ones where good and which were bad. I only found one bad one. I hope I can get them all back in the instrument cluster in the right places. :O) This is what it looked like.
I spent the rest of the day just sitting around in the yard enjoying the evening.
Nice day.