Biologists, Pelicans and River Otters Kayaking in the Russian River Estuary

Monday August 25, 2014 Jenner CA.

And Using the new camera

I’ve been using the new camera for a few days now. I’m not sure I like it or not. It’s way different than my old one and is going to take some getting use to. Some things I like about it and some things I don’t like about it. I haven’t used it long enough to figure it all out yet and there are some things I need to read up in the manual to figure out.

Anyway, I put my boat in the water at Jenner this morning and saw the biologists trapping and putting radio transmitters on some fish.

Here they are tagging the fish they caught with the net in the boat. They were busy so I just said hi and left them at it and went on up the river.

There were some white pelicans resting just past the east end of Penny Island.

I continued on up the river at my leisurely pace until I got to dead deer gulch were I rested, then turned back down the river.

River otters

I only went a couple hundred yards when I spotted something moving along the shoreline.

Closer inspection showed it to be eight or more river otters feeding along the shoreline as they moved down the river. I backed off a bit so I wouldn’t spook them, then, moved back a little closer after they saw me.

This is were I spied the otters moving along the shoreline feeding.

These otters didn’t seem too concerned with my presence and the new camera has a better zoom so I didn’t need to get too close.

I followed the  otters down to otter’s log. Here they are on otter’s log.

I continued to follow them down the river past the pelicans.

They started to go up on this log, but changed their mind and continued on down the river, going down the back channel of Penny Island.

When they came to this log on the back channel of Penny island, they all jumped up on it for a bit. Here’s a few of them.

I followed them into the slot near the west end of Penny Island where they disappeared. They had been fishing and eating fish all the way down, so were all likely full of fish and needed a nap.

Sitting in my boat in the slot.

I sat around in the slot for a half hour or so, until I heard the otters coming back out, so I left the slot and went out in the river and watched. Instead of continuing on down the river, they turned and headed back up the river and that was the last I saw of them.

I continued on down to the river’s mouth area, which looked like this. Birds and seals are resting on the sandy beach.

The ocean had some big waves coming in.

There were also some brown pelicans with seagulls on the beach down by the mouth.

I stayed down in the river’s mouth area for about an hour watching things, then headed back to the boat take out at the visitor center and was off the water around four PM.

When I got home, I had a nap and then finished unloading my van from my trip and did some watering and mostly took it easy for the rest of the day.