Thursday April 17, 2014 Jenner CA.
How long have the eagles been coming back to Jenner
As I arrived in Jenner this morning the wind was just starting to pick up a bit, but not too bad, yet.
I saw Ray’s truck in the parking lot, so I went on down to the river’s mouth area to see if I could find him. He was sitting in his kayak in front of the river’s mouth, just taking it easy.
Bald headed eagle
Just before I got to where he was I saw this bald eagle sitting up in the tree.
The river’s mouth area
The ocean was pretty rough with high tide coming on. We sat around there watching the harbor seals and the sea lions for about an hour.
This is what the river’s mouth looked like from our view.
As usual, there were some harbor seals resting on the sandy beach.
The wind was starting to pick up as we left the area and headed up river. That eagle flew by and circled and was gone, just as we were leaving.
A word about the eagles at Jenner
I’m pretty sure I took one of the first pictures of the first bald headed eagles that started to show up in the Jenner area in May of 2009. I saw it land on the east end of Penny island and it was eating a big fish. I paddled over there and took some pictures. I was surprised it let me get as close as I did, but then again it was eating the remains of a nice big fish.
I’d only seen it once or twice when a cow died shortly before this, but it was never in a place to get a picture of it.
Since then, the bald headed eagles have been making more frequent appearances in the area, increasing each year.
This is a picture of the first bald headed eagle, making an appearance in the Jenner area in May of 2009, eating what’s left of a big fish.
A little walk on the poison oak alley trail
We paddled on up the back side of Penny Island and decided to go ashore at the swamp rock trail area, just east of the island.
We went ashore by the trees on the right of this picture, just as we paddled out of the backside channel of Penny Island.
We went ashore here at the swamp rock trail, looking back to the town of Jenner.
The swamp rock trail still has swamp water sitting on it, so we didn’t go that way, but headed on up the river on the poison oak alley trail, about three quarters of a mile or so.
Something was making quite a commotion
We got to a place in the trail that is a rest area and were sitting there for a bit, when all of a sudden there was a lot of noise just through the trees and below us on the river. Ray said it sorta sounded like a big dog, such as a lab playing in the water and snorting. We couldn’t see what it was because of all the thick brush, but it was making a lot of snorts and splashes in the water. I mean, like the splashes were big splashes and quite load too.
I looked through this brush, but couldn’t see a thing, but sure could hear something.
I walked back down the trail to find an opening in the brush and this is what I saw and heard even better. Something was doing a lot of splashing in the shallow water, but I still couldn’t make out what was doing it?
Eventually, I saw one of the harbor seals head out into deeper water, maybe because it saw me. The other seal that was doing all the snorting and still was, was sitting near the shore, as can be seen in this picture.
It had it ‘s eye on me and eventually, it too went out into deeper water and was gone.
I have no idea what they were doing, but they sure made a lot of noise doing it.
We continued walking on the trail on up the river until we arrived at eagle’s landing where we took another break
I decided to go up the hill a bit from there to take another way back. This is our view as we went on up the trail through the trees and ferns and poison oak too.
Eventually, we had to come back down to the poison oak alley trail. This is my view as I followed Ray through it. It’s not all poison oak, but there is a lot of it mixed in with the lush vegetation.
Another one of our views as we are almost back to our boats. The trail goes right through there, with lots of poison oak.
And yes, the wind was blustery
When we got back to our boats, the wind had picked up some more. Ray said, It’s blustery.
I agreed.
It was white capping as we worked our way back to the launch ramp and took our boats out for the day, around three PM.
Even though it was a bit windy today, even blustery, it wasn’t that cold so it was still fairly nice.
