Tuesday September 9, 2014 Jenner CA.
I was up until four AM last night trying to get a network camera to work. I was going to go to bed about two AM, but about that time, things started to work, so I stayed up and made some progress.
That’s going to take some more work.
This morning, after a slow start I headed on down to Jenner for the day. I had in mind to go up to musk rat beach and check out how many more nests were in the brush there, so I headed up that way.
There were these three white pelicans resting on a log as I went by. They kept an eye on me, but didn’t seem to mind me paddling on by.
I also passed the merganser ducks, that I go by each day resting on a redwood log.
There appeared to be a lot of rat nests in this area
I paddled on up the river at my usual slow pace, stopping along the way, until I reached the musk rat nest beach area which is here. There is a musk rat nest to the right of that big tree. Ray and I thought we saw some more nests in the brush to the left of the tree as we paddled by yesterday and I was going to get out and check it out today.
This is what the nests look like. I went ashore and walked through the brush and counted eight of these types of nests, all close together. A musk rat colony? These other nests might also be pack rats as they make similar nests. But I think they might be musk rat nests as I’ve been seeing quite a bit of signs of them in the area this summer.
Nice beach here too
I also discovered the musk rat nest area has a good beach for going ashore, which is good as there aren’t too many places that are good to go ashore in this area. Which ever kind of rats they are, I think they’ve found a nice area for the nests. It’s also been one of my favorite places to sit in my boat, out of the wind and usually sunny in this spot.
I put my boat back in the water after exploring that spot and started back down the river, stopping in this spot for a bit, looking down to the town of Jenner.
Seagulls still eating crab
There were a bunch of seagulls on the east end of Penny Island as I approached Some were eating little Dungeness crab, like this one.
And there was a great blue heron prancing around there too, showing the seagulls who is boss.
I headed down the back channel of Penny Island and passed this seagull that had just caught a crab. The seagulls were doing well catching crab today.
I heard a commotion up in the hills behind Jenner and looked up to see this big truck start down the hill.
I rounded the west end of Penny Island and thought of going down to the river’s mouth area, but decided to go on in for the day, so headed on in.
Added noise to the drinking water
I had a bit of a nap when I got home, then checked out my watering stuff for the birds and the animals in the yard. It didn’t seem to be having much action yet. I decided it could use some water type noise to attract things to it, so I put a small pump in the water and put it on a timer to come on once in a while throughout the day and night.That should attract some attention, before too long.
The little pump in the drinking water container, gurgling away.
The network camera is going to drive me crazy
After that, I worked on getting this old network camera going with some success, then, no success.Things stopped working for now, but I’ll keep at it. Sometimes these things just need one to sleep on them and a new day might get thing working, or not. :O)
Another fine day kayaking around the Russian River Estuary.