Birds, Seals, Otters and Kids While Paddling Around Jenner

Thursday October 22, 2015 Jenner CA.

The dead sharks

I went over and talked with the Watertreks kayak rental lady this morning as I arrived at Jenner to see what date she saw the third dead spiny dogfish shark the other day. She said they found it on the sixth of October. Hummmmm.

She said the fish was in real bad shape, so I think it might be the same one as the second one Dan got a photo of. Dan got a picture of the second dead one on the 2nd of October.

Headed to the closed mouth

I put my boat in the water and headed down towards the closed river’s mouth area. I went by these geese hunkered down on the sand in a place I don’t usually see them. They must be coming down from the north, I suppose.

Biologists

I could see Jeff and Celeste doing maintenance and getting the data from the measuring devices attached to the buoy there.

I stopped and talked with them a bit and informed them what I knew about the dead sharks, informing them that maybe there were only two of them. Two is still better than one. We talked about some other stuff about the estuary before I continued on and let them do their work.

I continued on down towards the closed river mouth which looked like this. A light fog was drifting in.

I went by these birds preening and resting. Note the two harbor seals heading over the sand to the ocean.

I headed on down to the end of the river. This rock is taking on a new look. Bird crap, doesn’t it look nice? :O) Some cormorants and a great blue heron are resting on it, which means they all fed well this morning and are digesting their food.

I sat at the end of the river for a bit watching the harbor seals swimming around and then started on back up the river. These three harbor seals pulled out just as I was going by and started heading over the sand to the ocean. See all the seal tracks on the sand.

I went up the island back channel and stopped here in the grass at the upper end of the island and watched for a bit as the fog was moving in and out.

I went by these cormorants just past that. I’ve been going by them daily so they have gotten used to me and just sat there as I passed on by.

River otters

I was cruising up along the tree line when all of a sudden there was a big splash about ten feet in front of me. An otter had surfaced with a fish. We were both surprised, as the otter dove back under the water. I paddled away from it out towards the center of the river and waited about ten minutes before they showed their selves again. Sometimes going away form them is a good idea as it shows I’m not interested in them and they sometimes just continue doing their thing. I can also tell which way on the river they are going, so have a better chance of following them. They were headed up the river fishing away. I moved up near otter’s log and moved in a bit closer hoping they would come out on their log and shorty a couple of them did, but they didn’t stay long. I think there were three or four of them.

While I was busy watching the otter’s I could hear some harbor seals splashing just to the rear of me. I saw this big splash when I looked back, but I didn’t have time to watch both the seals and the otters, so I continued to follow the otters up the river hoping for some better photos.

The otters were being shy and weren’t showing themselves except for brief moments so I wasn’t dong well on the pictures of them.

This was one of the best ones I got of them before they ditched me and disappeared.

I continued on up to the muskrat nest area and sat here resting and watching in one of my favorite spots.

Too many people

I was watching a big flock of coots and some cormorants  floating across the river from me when I hear a lot of screaming and shouting. About a hundred people were paddling  by from up the river in about fifty kayaks an canoes. They sure were making a lot of noise which drove the birds over near me.

Something spooked the coots as I was watching but I couldn’t see what. It might have been the otters as they can take down coots. I noticed these other ducks I hadn’t seen before with  them, in the foreground.

Heading in

With all those kids on the water, I decided I better head back to the boat ramp before they got to it as they would block it for an hour or so, so I headed on back down the river along here. Most of the fog had moved back out by now as I paddled along. The kids were down on the sand by the ocean for awhile.

More geese

Just before I got to the boat ramp, I could see some big birds across the river, so I paddled on over to see what they were. They turned out to be some more geese.

I continued on to the boat ramp and put my boat on my car and went on home for the day. There were lots of boat trailers there to pickup the kids, so I’m glad I got out of there in time.

Home and were to drill the next well

Since I worked so hard yesterday, I decided to take it easy and give my sore back a break, so I just puttered around the yard and thought about where we might want to drill the next well.

That was my day.