A Diving Pelican, a Snake, Nest Building Swallows, Harbor Seals and a Windy Day

Wednesday May 6, 2015 Jenner CA.

Windy day

The weather guy said the wind was going to reach sixteen miles an hour today, but he was wrong. The wind got to at least twenty miles an hour.

I put my boat in the water and paddled across to Penny Island where I was thinking of going up the river, but as I sat, I started heading down towards the mouth, thinking the wind wasn’t too bad.

Here I am paddling down along Penny Island thinking I might make it down to the mouth.

Brown pelican diving

To my right, I could see this brown pelican diving for fish. I watched it dive multiple times and sometimes getting something to eat. It’s  just getting ready to start a dive in this picture.

They hit the water pretty hard and can make a big splash. No luck on this dive.

A garter snake approaches

I was watching a couple guys in kayaks taking pictures. I looked the way they were shooting and saw a bunch of swallows on a house and went to the area to get some pictures when I discovered they were taking pictures of each other and hadn’t seen the swallows building their mud nests. Just as I was going to take some photos of the swallows, this snake approached me in the water. It was a small garter snake which I know is harmless to me, but they catch little fish on the bottom and eat them.

Nest building swallows

The swallows were building their mud nests for the year. Most of them were about half finished. There is only a small entrance hole when the nest is complete.

Open river’s mouth

The wind seemed a little less, but not much so I headed down to the river’s mouth, which you see in this picture. The jetty and some harbor seals on the beach to the right. The mouth is open, but just barely right by the end of the jetty.

I watched as some big waves broke over the rocks at the end of the jetty and the wind seemed to pick up some more and it was bit cool coming off the ocean.

Dead harbor seal?

With the cool wind picking up, I didn’t stay long and was heading out when I went past this harbor seal with a pup. Is she dead or alive? Looks sorta dead, but if that was there would be some turkey vultures near by and there weren’t any of them, so I moved closer to check it out.

As I approached several other seals came in near her, maybe for protection. She picked up her head and and looked and I paddled off.

Headed for the back channel

The thought was to go up the island’s back channel so that’s where I was headed in this picture, looking up the island’s back channel. There’s a little slot off to the right of this picture that is out of the wind, so I headed into it and sat for a half hour or so napping a bit.

Nothing much happened while I was resting there, but maybe the wind picked up some more.

Let the wind blow me up the river

I paddled out in it and let it blow me up the back channel to the little channel on the upper end of Penny Island which I know is usually out of the wind. Yesterday, the channel was blocked by these logs, but today the estuary water level is a bit higher, so I was able to paddle over the logs and took it easy in this spot for a half hour or so, out of the wind.

Headed in for the day

With the wind picking up more, I decided to call it a day and worked my way across the windy waves to the boat ramp which looked like this looking down the river.

I put my boat on the car and was heading home thinking I should stop and get some groceries, but on the way, I felt lazy and just went on home, I figured I had enough to eat at home, but that meant no chocolate ice cream. :O)

Cranked up the weed mower machine

After a nap at home, I put gas in the weed mower and mowed the weeds in the yard until I was about to fall down and decided I better quit for the day. I did get a lot of those weeds mowed, but there’s still more of them and they haven’t stopped growing for the year yet.

The rest of the day, I spent sitting in chairs enjoying the yard until dark, when the cool air made me go in for the day.