Sunday, Mar. 24, 2013, Jenner, CA.

I live in a nice place

The traffic on the way home sucked.

My trip home wasn’t much fun, too much traffic, but I made it without incident. I left Quartzsite around nine thirty in the morning and was home in Guerneville just after midnight. Being a Saturday, there was lots of traffic, even into the late night. Just about everyone was going faster than the speed limit and on my bumper most of the time.

I was eager to kayak Jenner today.

After a nights sleep, I was up around nine thirty and headed for Jenner to kayak for the day. I got down there about noon and put my boat in the water. Immediately, while crossing over to the island three or four Sea lions surfaced around me for a moment and disappeared. I crossed over to the island and headed up the river as far as the highway one bridge.

Just past Penny Island I saw this Tern and Merganser.  Terns come to Jenner in numbers at certain times of the year.

Below is a picture of them.

There still seems to be steelhead fish in the river.

Just after that, I spied about a twenty four inch steelhead fish in the water near the shore, just above the island. It was in good shape and disappeared as it saw me, no time for a pic.

I continued up the river, taking it easy, as usual.

Hundreds of cormorants headed up the river to fish.

I was surprised by about four or five hundred cormorants flying by me around one pm and all headed up the river. They flow over my head in flocks for about ten minutes. There much have been some real feeding happening up the river someplace today. I’ve seen them in years past doing feeding frenzies up the river around the Monte Rio area. As near as I can tell, they eat a lot of the hatchery small fish that are released around this time of year. I think they eat a large number of them. They systematically hunt them in the river.

Below you can see some of these cormorants as they flew by me heading up the river.

Wild turkeys too.

I saw some kayakers checking something out on the opposite shore, so when over to check it out when they left. There was a flock of wild turkeys feeding along the waters edge.

Below is a picture of some of these wild turkeys.

There was this one male that kept up a display most of the time, while watching over his hens.]

Below is a picture of this male turkey in display.

And a couple eagle came by too.

Just after the turkeys, an eagle flew in and landed on the limbs in the water and I snapped the picture below. I didn’t get a picture of the other eagle with this one, and immature one that had landed on the beach, that didn’t have it’s white head yet.

A nice close up of an osprey.

As I headed down the back side of the island after going up to the highway one bridge and back, I spotted this osprey on the island head. Some Turkey vultures landed with it which meant it must have something to eat, but I didn’t’ see anything.

Below, you can see a picture of this nice looking bird.

Another picture of the osprey and one of the turkey vultures below.

A seal was eating a big fish.

Just after that, I spied a seal with a big fish, eating it, but failed to get a picture of it.

And another eagle was perched on the island.

I continued on down the back side of the island and spotted another eagle on the tree at the west end of the island.

Below is a picture of this eagle.

Below is another picture of this eagle just as it was getting ready to fly away.

The river’s mouth was wide open.

From there I continued on down toward the rivers mouth where I took a the picture of the river’s mouth below. The rivers mouth is open and has moved back to the Jetty area again as you can see below.

It was a nice day at Jenner today, although a bit breezy off and on, but warm just the same. Lot’s of different birds of all kinds in the area today.

Had a great day at Jenner.