Tuesday September 10, 2013 Monte Rio, CA.
A cloudy day
The weather man said it was going to be cloudy today, so I thought I’d do Monte Rio instead of Jenner, hoping for a little sun to break on through.
I arrived around eleven AM and put the boat in the water and headed on down the stream.
I passed by this male great blue heron resting in the bushes, preening itself. When they are preening they almost always have that little white feather stuck at the tip of their bill.
And about a quarter mile down, I ran into these Merganser ducks.
As I was watching them, they swim over to the right shore line and commenced hunting fish. They were catching lots of little ones as I watched them.
This great blue heron joined them. The big birds usually fish off other critters when they can, as they spook fish to them. That blur in the water is a merganser duck chasing little fish.
One of the mergansers caught something it couldn’t readily swallow, which I couldn’t quite make out, until later. It had a crawfish in it’s bill and was having a hard time getting it down.
After awhile I got tired of watching them and continued down the river, when I heard quite a bit of noise up on the road above the river. It was a logging truck, loading some redwood trees. They were cutting these down a couple days ago when I was in this area. They likely were too close to some houses.
I passed another great blue heron preening.
I went on down to the Villa Grande Hole where I sat around for awhile, then headed down the river some more. I was getting a bit chilly as I didn’t have the right clothes on for the weather. I made it down almost to the Moscow hole, but not quite when the breeze came up and I turned around and started back up the river and continued until I got back up to the Villa Grande hole where it was warmer.
I sat around there for awhile until I was warmed up again. This osprey landed in a tree nearby and made a lot of noise screeching.
I was going by some green weeds when I thought I saw something in them, what?
On inspection, it turned out to be a turtle sitting in the weeds. It didn’t take off when I approached it.
This is the turtle in the weeds.
I took some photos of it and it still didn’t move, although I was only a couple feet from it. So, I put my paddle under it and it stayed on the paddle for a bit.
It seemed to possibly have something wrong with it, maybe?
I did note that the right eye wasn’t looking good as you can see in the photo below. Compare that right eye to the left eye in the first turtle photo above. I’m not sure why it let me so close? It seemed to be ok, so I left it in peace.
I continued up the river to the Monte Rio boat ramp where I took my boat out of the water about three thirty PM and went on home.
Something to eat and a nap. I punched down some bread dough I was working on and formed it into two loaves for baking and let it rise. This is some dough I made without using store bought yeast. I made my own by just letting my tortilla recipe sit on the counter for a few days. About two cups flour, a tsp. of salt, and an eighth cup of olive oil and three quarters cup of water and a couple table spoons of sugar. All cornless, I hope. I would then use that dough, added to some new dough, to make something keeping about a golf ball size of it back to add to the next batch of dough. I did this several times until I now have a good yeast starter that isn’t a wet one, but is a firm ball that keeps well in the fridge until I need it for the next batch of dough.
This is the loaf of bread I made. It’s actually my second loaf, I ate most of the first loaf. Yummmmmmmmm, good. :O)
Another nice day.