Tuesday May 6, 2014 Monte Rio CA.
One mystery solved and another one pops up
On my way down to Jenner today, I passed Ray coming back towards Monte Rio in his truck which could only mean one thing. The winds must be up in Jenner, so the first opportunity I had, I turned around and went back to Monte Rio to kayak for the day with Ray.
We put our boats in the water and headed upstream. The usual shallow spot just below the bridge was easy today, because the river’s mouth is at least partially closed which backs the water level up in this area, so we made it through that part with ease.
This is our view just as we started to pass under the Monte Rio bridge, headed up the river.
Green Heron Fishing
Just past that, on the Rio Beach there was this Green Heron fishing away on the shoreline for little tiny fish, maybe shad?
It was very busy at it and catching a bunch of the little fish.
It has one of the little fish in this picture.
We left it fishing away and continued on up the stream leisurely.
Mayflies in abundance today
We arrived at the bend by the golf course. Lots of Mayflies were in the air and a lot of them had died and were in the water, which were being fed on by birds and fish.
This picture shows all the dead Mayflies in the water as we continued up the river. The Mayflies were not a bother to us.
Mystery solved
Last winter I noticed some little floats in the water around the golf course area and was wondering what they were all about. I thought maybe the biologists were going to put in a fish tracker, but nothing ever showed up.
Well, today as we passed over the area with the little floats, sure enough, there was a fish tracker there. It works like this. They implant little chips in the fish. When the fish passes over the pipes under the water with a wire in them, the fish is tracked, time and date and direction and their number is recorded. They have these trackers at certain spots in the river and some of the creeks too.
This is a picture of the pipes under the water as we passed over the tracker.
Continuing on up the river, past the golf course area this was our view of a beautiful day.
The mystery in the big tree
Just past this area, there is a tree that is one of the biggest redwood trees in the world, with about a twenty four foot diameter at the base.
I was looking for this tree and couldn’t find it right away, but when I did, another mystery popped up.
There was this orange thing way up in the tree near the top, maybe around three hundred feet in the air or so.
This is the top of the huge redwood tree. See the orange thing just below the dead part of the tree? What is it and how did it get way up there?
I zoomed in as much as I could and even blew it up a bit more on my computer? At the time, I thought, maybe it was some kind of tent that was set up in the tree canopy as they call it? I really couldn’t make it out from my kayak though. Then I thought maybe a kite that got away?
But looking at it , I don’t think it was a kit that got away, or a balloon. The corners of the thing seemed to be wrapped around something up there, so I ‘m back to some kind of tent way up there, either for someone to sit in or maybe covering something up there in the tree.
We’ll leave that mystery to be solved maybe sometime later?
As I was paddling along just past that, I came upon a wood duck taking it easy in the grass on the shore line. Likely full of those little Mayflies that were dead on the waters surface as I’ve seen them feeding in them before.
This is a male wood duck. Very colorful.
Turtles everywhere today
We passed a lot of turtles on logs by the shoreline today, too many to show, but here are some of them.
We made it up to the Vacation Beach summer Bridge and dam. They are just starting to put the bridge in for the summer. The County guys have just put the bridge spans in so far, now they have to build the road across on the right of the bridge. Then they will start putting the summer dam in too. The summer dam is dammed on June 16th.
Headed back down the river
We sat there below the bridge for awhile before heading back down the river.
We spied this female merganser duck with some little ones on the shoreline.
And another big ol turtle. The turtles seem to be back in abundance. I hadn’t seen many of them in this area last year and was wondering what had happened to them.
We made it back to Monte Rio in the late afternoon and pulled our boats out of the water and went on home for the day.