Wednesday, May, 1, 2013, Jenner, CA.

Bandit’s, no just Terns

Woke up to a nice sunny spring day.

Trying to put a propane grill in my van.

Started off the day looking at how to make a propane grill work in my van. Only trouble is I have a regulator at my propane tank and the gas grill has the same regulator at the grill, so there are two regulators, which isn’t good. The regulator at the grill also has the adjustment for the gas burner built into it, so I can’t just take it off. That just doesn’t give enough pressure to make the burner hot enough to grill. I either have to get another gas control valve or maybe try drilling out the gas orifice to a larger size to provide enough gas to the burner for more heat. Only trouble with drilling out the orifice is if it doesn’t work, I’ll just make the grill totally useless, unless I can put the orifice back to it’s original size. Sometimes, you just have to take a chance and go for it. It works, or you just go buy another unit and try something else. I’m still in the thinking stage on this one, for now.

Did some visiting today first.

Around two pm, I went to Monte Rio to visit a friend for a couple hours. That killed some time to let the higher tide come in at Jenner so I wouldn’t have to launch in the mud. I had a nice visit and was down at Jenner around four thirty. High tide was just after six, so the tide had already started to come back in some.

Paddled up the river.

Off I went across the river and up the south shore for about a mile. It was a little breezy, but warm and mostly on the very nice side. I just took my time and dallied along the way. Lots of different birds on the water, on the shore line and in the air. There’s almost always a lot of birds down there. So many birds, it’s easy to just take them all for granted. I try not to.

The biologists have been out.

When I arrived at the hole at Eagle’s landing, there was a big orange buoy in the water. That meant that the biologists put their measuring equipment out in the estuary for the summer this morning. I sat around that area for an hour or so and then headed down the river toward the river’s mouth.

Down the backside of Penny Island I went just taking my time, as usual.

Terns on Penny Island.

There were some birds on the shore on the west end of Penny Island as I exited from the backside.

Looks like Terns to me, with a seagull too. Below is a picture of these terns.

They fly around high in the sky and dive for small fish in the estuary at certain times of the year.

If you look close at these birds, don’t they look like bandits? They squawk a lot too.

After rounding the end of the island I headed toward the river’s mouth. The view is below. The water is almost flat now.

I passed a lot of harbor seals out swimming around in the water near the mouth area. They were likely hunting as it was high tide and a lot of critters from the ocean come in with the high tide salt water.

The fog threatened,…………but, it stayed out.

There was a fog bank just hanging out in the ocean. It tried to come in for just a bit as shown below, but then retreated shortly there after. The picture below is the view of the river’s mouth as I approached it, showing the fog, just covering the jetty.

I spent an hour or so at the river’s mouth. John, who lives down there came by in his kayak and we shot the bull for awhile before I headed back.

By this time the wind had died to nothing and the river was real flat, as the photo below shows, looking back toward the town of Jenner.

A male great blue heron was fishing the west end of Penny Island as shown below.

One last shot of the sun going down.

The sun was starting to sink and so was I, so I took this last shot of the sun almost down and headed in for the boat launch area, around eight PM.

Made it home and fixed up some dinner and now I’m resting up.

Had a nice day at Jenner.