Old Bridge Repair, Two Bald Headed Eagles and a Sunset

Sunday November 22, 2015 Jenner CA.

Note: In a comment, Rick says he saw a sign saying they will open the river’s mouth on Monday the 23rd.

Working on the old bridge

This morning I’d planned to do some prep work on the old bridge bulkhead that’s falling apart. I was just going to prep it by digging it out to make a flat on the bottom to put some old concrete pieces in there to keep it from washing out more when the creek comes up in the winter. The digging out part went pretty fast, so I started hauling some concrete pieces to the project which were stacked about fifty feet away. I was stacking the concrete pieces into the hole, putting them flatly on the bottom of the hole so they’d stay in place.

Some of the pieces of cement were larger than I could carry so I dragged them to the repair spot taking lots of breaks.

About the time I had all the concrete pieces neatly stacked in the hole, Fred, my neighbor, drives up in his backhoe, so I stop him and ask if he’d mind getting  me a bucket of dirt to fill up the hole that I had all the concrete neatly stacked in. He went not far to get some dirt and came back and dumped it in the hole. A little shovel work on my part and the hole was all filled up and that part of the repair was done.

Sunset yak

By now it was about two PM so I was thinking a sunset yak at Jenner was in order, so I got something to eat and was down at Jenner just after three PM.

Most of the people that had been out on the water had gone home for the day by the time I got there. I put my boat in the water and paddled across to Penny island and into the little channel on the upper end, looking up the river.

Did I mention the wind was down and the sun was out with some clouds in the sky, which should make for a good sunset around five PM.

Lotsa coots

I could see the sun was already going behind the hill up river, but there was still sun over by Paddy’s rock, so I crossed over the river to the north side and paddled up along the shoreline. I ran into a large group of coots resting along the shoreline.

Here’s just a few of them. I paddled on by. They got a bit nervous, but didn’t fly off.

Two bald headed eagles

I paddled over to Paddy’s rock and then crossed back over the river to the south side. I was just approaching Eagle’s landing when two bald headed eagle’s flew out of the trees and flew across the river to where the coots were. They started attacking the coots.

I watched as the eagle’s attacked several times. Here the eagle has got the coots on the run.

They missed

The coots moved on up the river and the eagle’s landed. Apparently they didn’t get any coots. Here’s one of the eagle’s just after it landed after missing all the coots.

About that time a bunch of people in cars on the highway saw the eagle’s and were stopping along the road to watch. I think I had the best seat.

With all the people on the road watching the eagles flew across the river and landed on one of their eating logs, so I followed as I was headed down that way anyway as the sun was going down.

Here’s the two eagles sitting on the log as I approached.

Did you notice the harbor seal on the log with the eagles? Pops, I think. Doesn’t he look content.

I’ve been seeing these two eagles for several days now, so they’ve seen me around a bit and didn’t seem weary of me, so I inched my way by them along the shoreline as they watched, but didn’t fly off.

They didn’t seem too concerned, eh.

One of them did fly into the air, flew a short distance and then came back and landed again as I watched.

I don’t think this is a pair as they are both about the same size, maybe two females, just guessing as females are larger than males.

I was about fifty feet while going by the eagle’s when I captured photos of each bird.

Here’s one of them.

And here’s the other bird.

They got back together as I paddled away headed down to watch the approaching sunset.

I paddled down along the north side of Penny Island and went past this great blue heron just sitting and enjoying the setting sun.

Paddled onto Penny Island

I decided to paddle onto the flooded Penny Island and watch the sun go down as I figured there’d be nice reflections on the stilled water on the island.

Here’s my view just as the sun went down, from the flooded Penny Island, looking west.

I watched from that spot for quite some time before moving back out on the open water of the river just in front of the island. By now, the sun had been down for a bit and this was my view looking west.

After taking many pictures, I turned to head in for the day and the town of Jenner looked like this.

It was just getting dark at five thirty when I pulled onto the boat ramp and loaded my boat on the car and drove on home for the day.

Nice day, nice sunset.