Tuesday April 28, 2015 Jenner CA.
Fogs lifting
I could see a bit of fog just starting to clear as I drove into Jenner this morning. The sun was coming out with the fog lifting and the wind was low, so far.
I put my boat in the water and crossed over the river to Penny Island and this is what it looked like as I headed up. There’s a bit of moss and some kind of water grasses growing in the warmer spring river water. The estuary water is layered right now with the denser salt water underneath the lighter and warmer fresh water that comes down the river. This means the vegetation on top is mostly fresh water growing stuff and if the water turns to salty, it will die. But for now the water on top is fresh so the fresh water plants will grow as fast as they can.
The high fog lifting made things rather scenic as I paddled along.
I could see the bovine on the ridge top across the river from me. I scanned the hills for wild pigs, but didn’t spot any. I also scanned for wild turkeys and also didn’t spot any, but I heard some up the river ahead of me somewhere, but couldn’t make out where, yet.
I worked my way up river to this spot I call it Muskrat Nest Beach and was sorta taking it easy there, resting and watching and listening. That’s the small town of Jenner down there in the middle of the picture.
I heard gobbles
Behind me, somewhere, I heard the loud gobble of a wild turkey, so I moved my boat out into the middle of river so I could look back at the hill behind me and try to spot the turkey. It was really gobbling away and I finally placed it in these big trees up on the ridge top, so I watched and it finally came out and started down the ridge back, gobbling as it went.
Can you spot the wild turkey just to the top of center?
It’s moving down the ridge headed closer to the river, gobbling away.
Aha, two turkey vulture nests
As I was watching the turkey, I saw a turkey vulture land by this big rock, which might not mean much, but. I know this spot to be a turkey vulture nest from last year, so I’ve been keeping my eye on it to see if it will be used again this year and this pretty much confirms it’s being used as a nest again.
The vulture is way up on the ridge top and rather hard to see, but it’s in the center of this picture. It’s nesting spot is in that big crack just behind it.
Interesting discovery
That little discovery is even more interesting as this means there are two turkey vulture nests on this hill. I’ll keep watching these birds to see what I can learn from them.
Meanwhile, back to that wild turkey up on the ridge. I watched it get to this spot, which was just over the river and then it flew across the river to the over side. That’s the tom turkey in the small trees just above center.
I watched as it flew across the river and landed here, gobbling some more and headed off to the left in the weeds and out of sight.
This little tom also flew across the river at the same time as the other one and landed here, not too far from the other tom. As the other tom gobbled, this tom headed in the other tom’s direction. I watched until it was out of sight.
Geese
I continued on down the river and just past Paddy’s rock, these two geese were taking it easy on the gravel bar and let me get fairly close without them flying off.
I continued on down the river and heard a bunch of honking from these geese that were flying down the river and seemed to be communicating with the geese on the shoreline.
Here’s some of the shoreline geese, which were honking back at the geese flying over head.
Any wild berries yet?
I was thinking I should check the wild black berries to see if any where ripe yet, so I pulled ashore at Swamp rock to check that out as there’s a bunch of berry bushes there. I pulled to shore in this spot.
I found a few red berries, but they need a little time to turn black, so it won’t be long before I can enjoy some of those.
Terns
While I was checking on berries this big bird was flying over my head checking me out. It’s a tern. They’ve been doing some diving for fish around the estuary lately. They also like to screech a lot as they fly around fishing.
Scenic Redwood stumps
I could see the wind coming up a bit as I headed down the Penny Island back channel to it’s lower end and went past these two old huge redwood stumps I showed you the other day. This is a shot of what the bottoms of those big trees looked like. They are rather scenic in their own right.
And the wind comes up
As I neared the lower end of the island the wind increased some more, so I decided to let it blow me back to the boat ramp. All I had to do was steer to the ramp.
I took my boat out the water and went on home for the day where I spent most of the rest of the day puttering around and enjoying my yard.
Another nice day.