Brown Pelican Day Kayaking the Russian River Estuary

Friday July 24, 2015 Jenner CA.

I met Steve at Jenner this morning at the boat ramp. We put our boats in the water and headed across the river to Penny Island with this view looking down river.jenner

 

Diving pelicans

There were some brown pelicans flying around and diving on fish  as we paddled down the Islands side. Here’s one of the pelicans just after a dive.pelican

 

There were some birds on the lower end of Penny Island as we paddled by headed for the river’s mouth area.

Here’s some terns resting on the gravel doing a bit of preening.terns

 

Preening pelicans

There were some brown pelicans preening by the terns. With bills like that, they have to do some maneuvering.pels

 

We crossed over the river headed towards the river’s open mouth which looked like this looking out into the Pacific ocean. Lots of harbor seals resting there on the beach as usual.mouth

 

We could see some more brown pelicans diving on fish here by the end of the river.pelfish

 

I didn’t realize the pelicans can bend their bottom bill so much. The top part is rigid, but the bottom part seems to be able to move around a bit. You can see the bend in it’s lower bill.bills

 

We hang at the river’s mouth for a bit, then headed back up the river heading for the island back channel where we went by even more brown pelicans taking it easy.pel2

 

We worked our way up to Paddy’s rock were we sat here for a spell before continuing on up the river a little more. Nice day.river

 

From there we crossed back over the river to this spot and continued up to the Muskrat area just ahead.upriver

 

Fast otters

I saw some splashing in some reeds and spotted some river otters hunting along the shoreline. They saw us and mostly hid from us and this was the only picture I could get of them today, just the one otter as the others dove and were out of sight.otter

 

We made it up to the muskrat area and sat for a good break in this spot.fog

 

Just before five PM, we started back down the river and stopped at the old redwood log graveyard where we saw this little bird feeding along the shoreline. I see these little guys often along the shoreline, but can rarely get a picture of them as they hop along a lot and hide in the bushes.bird

 

We pulled into the boat ramp sometime after five and went on home for the day where I sat around and did nothing.

Nice day.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.