It was a bit overcast, but otherwise real nice as I put my boat in the water at Jenner this morning. I paddled across to Penny Island and started up the river.
I saw Steve pull into the parking lot, so I waited for him to catch up. We continued on up the river at a slow pace to Muskrat Nest Beach.
Turkey vultures
On the way, we passed some turkey vultures in the trees and flying overhead. I couldn’t see what they were after. I passed by this one in the trees.
We were headed up to the area just ahead, so we continued along.
Baby turkey vulture
I noticed a turkey vulture up on the rock where the turkey vulture nest is below. It appeared to be the young turkey vulture as it ‘s head is still black and it appeared to be crouching there.
I’m pretty sure the otters took out the other young vulture as they were nesting right below where the vultures nest was, quite heavily, when the other vulture went missing.
We hung around at Muskrat for a bit, then crossed over to Paddy’s rock. We then crossed back over the river again and continued on down the back channel of Penny Island.
Green Heron
I saw this green heron on the shoreline. I don’t see that many green herons on this part of the river.
The heron flew down the river in front of us. I was headed for it when a flock of pipers flew onto the shore right in front of me.
I caught up with the green heron again and was able to get a better picture of it.
Open river’s mouth area
We paddled on down to the river’s open mouth and sat in the foam and watched what was going on in the area.
There were plenty of harbor seals resting on the beach.
Some brown pelicans, cormorants, seagulls and a humanoid.
It was getting close to five as we pushed away from the mouth area and headed back towards the lower end of Penny Island.
This osprey was sitting on this stick on the end of Penny Island.
And this egret was fishing along the edge of the island and walked right up to us. It’s got an itch and doing a scratch in this photo.
We headed on in for the day and went on home.
Old van work
I worked on my van. I took the water pump off and the thermostat out and flushed out the water compartments in the engine by running lots of water through it. My plan is to put what I can back together tomorrow. I’m waiting for a new radiator, but there are some things to do before I get it. I still need to change the alternator voltage regulator and install a new voltage gauge in the dash.
I also plan to install a shroud around the fan. I’m in the planning stages of that and think I have some good ideas on how to make a nice one, but again I need the new radiator before I can start that project as I need to get measurements with the radiator installed.
Anyway, had a nice day out on the estuary and working on the van wasn’t bad either.
After reading this posting I was thinking about the young turkey vulture that went missing. Suspecting the otters as the culprits, many questions popped up: Do river otters feed on birds along the river as well as fish? Did the otters kill and eat the adolescent vulture because they are natural enemies or felt threatened by their presence?
Getting back to beavers and reintroducing them, you mentioned, “It’s happening anyway, it will just take a lot longer.” I was not aware of that happening on the Russian River watershed. This is very interesting, where might it be happening?
Your blogs are the next best thing to be paddling the river by myself. Thanks again, keep up the good work.
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Header Pictures
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
After reading this posting I was thinking about the young turkey vulture that went missing. Suspecting the otters as the culprits, many questions popped up: Do river otters feed on birds along the river as well as fish? Did the otters kill and eat the adolescent vulture because they are natural enemies or felt threatened by their presence?
Getting back to beavers and reintroducing them, you mentioned, “It’s happening anyway, it will just take a lot longer.” I was not aware of that happening on the Russian River watershed. This is very interesting, where might it be happening?
Your blogs are the next best thing to be paddling the river by myself. Thanks again, keep up the good work.