Monday November 24, 2014 Jenner CA.
I arrived at Jenner this morning and could see Ray, John and Steve already across the river in their boats taking it easy in the small channel on the east end of Penny Island so I put my boat in the water and joined them for a paddle up the river. They wanted to paddle up to the Willow Creek area, so we started off.
It’s an eagle
Right away, Ray says there’s an eagle that just landed on that line over there. I looked and it looked more like an osprey, but I think it was some kind of hawk.
Just past that, we saw a seagull eating something on a log that the guys said was a crab, but getting closer, it turned out to be a seagull eating an old coot carcass. It’ seems the coots are fair game to all kinds of predators down here.
We continued on up the river to a mostly calm day.
Is it an eagle?
Just as we passed the eagle’s landing area, a big bird was approaching us from the front. It’s an eagle, no, yes, no, yes it is, as it flew over our heads and tried to land in one of the eagle’s landing trees, but it had picked branches that were too small to land on so couldn’t make a successfully landing right away. I was watching just over my head, but didn’t have the camera out until it finally landed in the other tree which is in the center of this picture, which is the eagle’s landing area, because eagle’s are known to land in this area.
Somewhere in that big tree was the eagle
It took me a while to spot the eagle in this tree as it landed more inside the tree, but I finally found it and took some pictures. From looking at the pictures and seeing how large it was while it flew over us, I’d say it is an immature female bald eagle. Females are about twice the size of males and this one had a lot of white on it, just starting go get it’s white head and tail feathers. The eagle was determined to land in this tree right above us and didn’t seem to mind our presence, I think I found out why it wanted to land later.
We left the eagle in the tree and continued on up the river, taking it easy.
I could see a lot of splashing up the river in front of us and was wondering what was going on. Closer examination showed it to be some cormorants taking a bath.
We’ve just gone under the bridge on highway one and the water was real flat now.
Did the eagle kill the goose?
Just past the bridge, I could see a seagull eating something in the grass. Seagulls don’t kill birds, but eat the left overs from what does kill them. I think the eagle we saw had just dined on what we think was a goose and landed in that tree by us to digest it, as we saw the eagle not far below this spot.
Paddling into Willow creek
We worked our way up to the Willow creek area and paddled on in, under this bridge.
We sat around and talked an had something to eat in this area as it’s real nice on three-part of the creek we could paddle into.
Turkey vultures get theirs
When we left that area, we paddled back across the river where the seagull was working on what was left of the goose. By now, turkey vultures had moved in and had taking the goose parts away from the seagull and were finishing it off.
There was some talk about going for a hike up Muskrat trail, but as we passed that area no one spoke up, so I figured everyone was too lazy and so was I, so we kept heading down the river. John left us and headed back in near eagle’s landing. I checked to see if the eagle was still there, but it had left.
We passed by these birds just above Penny Island. Mostly cormorants and coots, I think. The same spot the seagull had been eating the dead coot on then way up.
Headed for the mouth area
Ray decided to go in for the day, so Steve and I continued down the back channel of Penny Island headed for the river’s mouth area.
There were quite a few brown pelicans down that way. Here’s one of them as it flew by us.
Mouth is closed up still
The mouth is closed up with sand, but it looked like water has been breaking over the sand and bringing some ocean water into the estuary along several places on the sand bar that separates the river from the ocean.
River’s end
We paddled down to the end of the river and sat around in this spot for a while just watching. Looking back up the river from the end of the river.
Spooked coots
We eventually started on back for the day. As we got near the boat ramp, we ran into this large group of coots, which were on the skittish side, but we couldn’t see what was causing them to be spooked.
We hit the ramp and took our boats out for the day and that was it for a nice day paddling around the estuary.