Tuesday March 3, 2015 Jenner CA.
The sun was out and there was a light wind as I drove into Jenner this morning. I could see Ray’s’ truck in the parking lot, but I didn’t spot him in his yak. I put my boat in the water and headed down to the open river’s mouth as it was just coming off high tide.
This was my view as I paddled along the north edge of Penny Island just as I was about to clear the bottom end of it on the left, headed for the river’s mouth.
Lots of cormorants and seagulls resting on the sandy beach near the mouth.
I spotted Ray in his boat at the end of the river. See him on the far right.
As I paddled over by him, I went by these cormorants with the harbor seals behind them. There were lots of harbor seals resting here today, maybe a couple hundred of them.
What’s that?
It was so nice out, Ray and I sat at the end of the river for a couple hours or so before we headed up the river. On the way out, I spotted this thing up by the highway and was wondering what it might be as the biologists are always putting things out for me to try and figure out what they are. Shortly after seeing this Ray says they are measuring the jetty over there again. That explains it.
Mapping the jetty
We could see this guy walking with a walker pulling a little sled walking across where the buried jetty goes under the sand. It’s hard to see, but there are little antenna’s on his equipment that are likely sending data to the thing up on the hill or it is a repeater that picks up the data and sends it to a recorder somewhere?
Here’s another shot of the guy with the walker. The walker is likely some kind of device that thumps to send a signal down into the sand and is picked up by his sled so they can determine what is under the sand. At least that’s my best guess.
We continued on past them and headed on over to the back channel of Penny Island.
Here is our view as we headed on over there looking up the river, with Jenner on the left.
We passed these mergansers just as we came out of the island back channel.
We paddled on up to the Indian rock trailhead and went to shore for a little exploring.
The trail head is just up ahead a bit on the right.
Hike through the ferns
We walked through these big green ferns.
And by this big mushroom on a pepperwood tree trunk. It’s about eighteen inches across. I think they call them conks. The top of it is hard and it grows a little more each year from the bottom part that is white.
We walked by this big muskrat nest made of sticks. It’s about eight feet high.
We explored around there for about an hour, then got back in our boats and headed on back down the river.
Young Eagle
As we were paddling along an immature bald headed eagle flew over our heads from behind us and landed in a tree at eagle’s landing. But before I could spot it in one of the big trees, it flew off again and this was our view of it. It’s just starting to get it’s white head and white tail feathers.
We took our time paddling in as it was such a nice day. The sun was out, the wind was down and the temperature was perfect.
We took our boats out and went on home and that was it for a real nice day paddling around the Russian river estuary at Jenner.