Wednesday April 1, 2015 Jenner CA.
It was a windy day
The weather guy said it was going to be windy today. When I arrived at Jenner, the wind was up. I put my boat in the water despite the wind and paddled across to Penny Island. With all the wind, I decided not to paddle down to the open river’s mouth as I could see there was a bit less wind up the river, so I headed that way.
These ducks had found a place mostly out of the wind and watched me as I passed by them.
Turkey vultures
I paddled on up about a mile to the muskrat nest area where I saw these two turkey vultures sitting up by buzzard rock getting some sun.
Buzzard rock walk
With all the wind, I decided to go for a little walk up to buzzard rock so I put my boat into shore at this spot, which I call muskrat nest beach.
Here’s one of the muskrat nests I walked by as I headed up to buzzard rock.
Buzzard rock is just above the river. That’s it to the left of this photo, looking down the river towards the town of Jenner.
I was scanning the hillside across the river as I walked up the trail and thought I saw two wild pigs running, but they seemed to be moving too fast for pigs. Looking closer, it turned out to be two frisky young calves running for the fun of it.
This was my view as I made it to the top of buzzard rock, looking across the river.
That’s Paddy’s rock on the right with the gravel behind it with the cormorants resting on the gravel bar.
Here’s a closer view of Paddy’s rock. The cormorants are that black group of birds to the left.
While I was standing on buzzard rock, I took this photo of a buzzard sitting on a rock below me. It just popped up there. I think it flew in out of some rocks below me, possibly from sitting on it’s nest? It sorta looks like the buzzard is flying below me.
I sat on the rock for a couple hours before starting down the trail back to my boat.
I had to go through this patch of nettles on the way back. I went through them very carefully and only got hit on my hand.
I got back in my boat and paddled against the wind back down along this side of the river staying along the river’s edges to avoid as much wind as possible.
Most of the trout type fish went to the ocean
I noticed a lack of fish jumping out of the water today. I only saw one do it instead of the many that were jumping out of the water before they opened the river’s mouth yesterday. That would indicate to me that most of the little fish went out into the ocean to continue their journeys.
Terns in the area
The last couple of days, I’ve noticed there are a few terns flying around screeching as they do. I caught these two resting on the end of Penny Island as I approached. They fish from the air, diving when they see a fish.
The wind was blowing hard enough to stir up the river bottom mud which turns the water brown. I’m just about to cross over the river here to the boat takeout at the visitor center.
I took my boat out of the water and went on home for the day and that was my day.