Friday March 20, 2015 Jenner CA.
Sometimes when the fog moves, it’s cold
As I arrived at Jenner this morning, I could see the fog was blowing out, as in leaving the area. I got out of my car at the boat ramp and was greeted with a cool wind off the ocean. I was thinking I should go back to Monte Rio to kayak, but what the hey? I put my warm stuff on and put the boat in the water and paddled across the river to Penny Island. The wind was blowing cold there too, so I retreated to the upper end of Penny Island where there is a little channel which is usually out of the wind and it was. I was sitting around there when the sun came out. It felt good warming me up, so I sat there enjoying the warmth.
I passed by this great blue heron on the way to the end of the island.
The fog moves on up the river
I’m sitting in the island channel. You can see the fog that has blown out of the area. Fog is that white cloud in the background, looking up the river. The other stuff is high clouds which had lots of breaks in them to let the sun through. With the fog blown out, the wind died down nicely now too.
Muskrat Nest beach
Now that the wind was down and the sun was out, I left the cover of the channel and headed on up the river to Muskrat nest beach and sat in this spot.
As you can see things changed to real nice as I sat in this spot watching the bird activity across the river. I was also listening for the gobble of wild turkeys, but didn’t hear any for the longest time.
Not many gobbles from the wild turkeys
The wild turkeys don’t seem to be gobbling much lately, but eventually, I heard one in the brush just behind me. I think the hens move into the brush to nest as it has a lot of protection for the birds. I heard the gobble several more times, but there was nothing to see.
After a good rest there, I started back down the river when I saw this turkey vulture land on buzzard’s rock which I was just below.
Lots of geese pairs on the river
I could hear a bunch of geese honking across the river so I paddled over there to have a look. Here’s of couple of the noise makers.
I was headed for Paddy’s rock when these ducks took off, skipping across the water.
On the gravel just on the other side of Paddy’s rock , I saw these birds getting some sun. A couple turkey vultures and some cormorants and a seagull or two. Click the picture for a better quality picture.
I continued paddling down the river’s shoreline, passing quite a few pairs of geese along the way. Then I crossed over the river to head down the Penny Island back channel as I was headed for the river’s mouth area.
I passed by these merganser ducks taking it easy on a big redwood log.
Going down the back channel this pair of mallard ducks crossed my path.
And just past those ducks where a pair of geese, and here’s one of them. They were grazing on the grasses in this spot.
Headed for the open river’s mouth
Moving right along, I came out of the back channel and cleared the end of Penny Island and this was my view as I headed down to the river’s mouth area. You can see the river’s mouth is open, to the far right of this picture. There are harbor seals, seagulls and cormorants resting on the beach to the left of the open mouth.
Here’s some of the cormorants and seagulls with a few harbor seals mixed in too. All taking it easy on the sandy beach.
The ocean is on the other side of the sandy beach and every so often a big wave would break over the jetty rocks.
After hanging around the river’s mouth for a bit, I paddled along the sandy beach away from the mouth area and stopped to look back at this spot. The day sure turned out nice.
Grazing Penny island deer
I left that spot and headed back over to Penny Island where I was paddling along it’s north shore when I jumped these two island deer browsing away on the grasses. They were only concerned with me for a moment then went back to the grasses.
I left the deer to their browsing and headed on in to the boat ramp where I took my boat out and went on home for the day.
Some yard work and some sitting around
I had a little nap then a cup of coffee and went out in the yard and did some shoveling of dirt to tidy up around the new well site. As the mud from the drilling dries up, I can shovel the dirt to tidy things up and make the area look nice again. I did what I could and now will wait for some more of the mud to dry up.
I sat around in the yard for the rest of the day, until it started to cool down just before dark. That was my day.