Wednesday June 10, 2015 Jenner CA.
The day started out with biologists
It was clear and the wind was down as I drove into Jenner this morning and put my boat in the water. As I crossed over the river to Penny Island I could see some biologists in their boats down the river near the ocean doing something.
I paddled over to the little channel on the upper end of Penny Island and was taking it easy. As I sat there, the biologists approached and started doing their thing right in front of me.
Dragging the sleds
They were collecting samples of living things the fish might eat from the bottom of the river. To do this, they drag this sled thing along the bottom, then pull it up and remove the samples.
Here he is just pulling a sled up out of the water full of samples.
Here they have the sled up and are removing the samples.
The sled is a netted device with a sample collector on the end which you can see pretty well here. These guys are taking samples in the deeper water.
This other group is doing the same thing, but using a smaller sled and dragging the shoreline with it.
Here, they are just pulling the sled out in the water with the boat, so the person on the shore can pull it in and collect the samples from between them.
The diver on the boat also takes this little piece of PVC pipe and pushes it into the bottom of the river to get a sample of the river bottom to see what’s living in it. The other boat does the same along the shoreline.
I watched and it looked like a lot of hard work to me. :O) I left them at it and started up the river.I could see some geese resting on the opposite shore as I paddled along.
The wild turkeys were gobbling
It was rather nice out. I could hear some wild turkeys gobbling somewhere up ahead and they sounded like they were at a place I’d seen them before, but they aren’t easy to spot.
I paddled along here and could hear the turkeys somewhere up ahead, maybe on that grassy hill.
This merganser duck was fishing as I paddled by it.
The biologists motored on by me headed up the river to get some more samples up that way.
Wild turkeys
I could hear the wild turkeys as I approached the muskrat nest area, but I couldn’t see them. Their calls were coming from somewhere up on the hill and there was a lot of brush up there so maybe I wouldn’t spot them. I backed out into the middle of the river and just sat and listened and watched the hill for the turkeys and it finally paid off as I spotted them up on the ridge. They were feeding in the grasses up there.
Three wild turkeys up on the ridge.
Eventually I started paddling back down the river and the seal I went by yesterday on this log was back again.
I was debating with myself whether to go down to the closed mouth or not, so I started working my way down the side of the island taking my time as I hadn’t decided yet.
Fog moves in fast
While I was undecided, the fog suddenly moved in, so I went on in for the day.
Here you can see the fog moving in.
I went on home and puttered in the yard doing some watering. I uncovered the blueberries just enough to eat a bunch of them. I also went down in the creek that flows by here to inspect the old bridge that crosses the creek. It’s falling apart and needs some bracing performed on it before winter.
That was my day.