Nov. 7, 2012 Jenner CA.
Foggy and cool kayaking Jenner today
Yes, it sure was, made me think maybe winter is here. My brother Mike came by around eleven this morning and we went to Jenner. I was fairly calm, but it was a bit on the high fog side and a bit cool too. We decided to go down to the mouth first, just in case the wind came up later. we’d rather be at the mouth area when the wind was down as it was now. Didn’t really think I’d take many pictures today, mostly because of the fog and gloom, but I was wrong. I took about a hundred and fifty pics. You just never know what you might see down there.
Below is a picture of the river mouth that is just barely open. There are seals and lots of birds and you can see that there is high fog.
Below is a picture of the seals and something stirred the birds up too.
While we were sitting there these two guys showed up and one of them started walking around the beach with his stick. When he got close to us I said he was sure getting a lot od exercise walking around like that. Turned out he and his buddy were mapping the beach sand for the biologists. He said they do it once a mouth. Seems like a good idea as it moves around a lot, depending on the weather.
We headed back up the river around the back side of Penny Island and one of the eagles was in the tree.
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Just past the eagle were a bunch of these coots, must have been several hundred of them.
And just past the coots, were these While Pelicans, roosting and a grooming.
These pelicans landed with the cormorants, which made things a bit crowded, they are just thinking about flying off.
An Eagles diving on a Cormorant says my brother.
It was a cool day, so we decided to call lit a day a bit early and went in and put the boats on the car and preceded to go home. Just as we were leaving Jenner my brother says an eagle is diving on a cormorant, so I pulled over on the side of the road and got my camera out. Sure enough an eagle was diving on what we thought was a cormorant as we’ve seen them do it before, but we never did really see this cormorant as most of the time it was under water, every time it would come to the surface the eagle would dive on it again, not letting it get much air. The other eagle was still over in the tree, so this was another one.
Below is the eagle lining up for a dive. Pics aren’t too good, but it’s the best I could do. :O)
Most of the time, the eagle just would dive and skim the water, but this time he made a try for it and missed.
From the road, we thought the eagle was diving on a cormorant, but the camera got this shot I enlarged a bit. No cormorant, it’s an old coot, or mud hen as it is also called. Seems the eagle only picks on them when they are by themselves, not when they are all flocked up. Too bad for this guy.
This is the eagles last dive and we were pretty sure he got the bird, but still couldn’t see it with our eyes. We looked all around on the water for the bird to come up and it never did, so we were pretty sure the eagle got it.
The camera got this shot of the eagle flying off with it’s kill. This shot was also enlarged a bit. If you look close you can see he is carrying something.
He flew over to a log across the river and it looked like he was eating something, but we couldn’t really tell for sure, but the camera showed that the eagle did get a coot for dinner.
Since we were pulled over gawking, another car stopped and guy got out and said, wow, is that a bold headed eagle. Sure is. Boy was he excited.
That was our day, went home, got the wood stove going and got warm and took a nap.
Another great day on the river.
