Paddling Around the Russian River Estuary Among the Brown Pelicans

Saturday September 23 and 24, 2022 Jenner CA.

Paddle day

I went down to Jenner for a paddle yesterday but got so tired out I never was able to post the blog until today.

I arrived at Jenner just after noon, about the time most people are going home for the day as they were out for a morning paddle.

Pelicans everywhere

I got the boat into the water and right away ran into a bunch of brown pelicans. They seemed to be everywhere today, lots of  them.river1_thumb1

 

I paddled over to where they were and got right in the middle of them.

Lucky I didn’t get run over.flying2_thumb1

 

So, it  looked like it would be a brown pelican day. I turned and started up river where there were more of them.river3_thumb2

 

They are graceful fliers, especially for being such large birds.pel4_thumb2

 

This was a big group of them. It seems they all wanted to be on the old redwood stump in the water.pels5_thumb1

 

I sat around and just watched them do their thing.pels6_thumb1

 

I paddled up the river a short distance and saw this little bird feeding in the rocks on the shoreline.bird7_thumb

 

And I paddled by these birds which were resting on the shoreline getting some sun, mostly cormorants.birds8_thumb1

 

And this bird was keeping an eye on me as I passed on by, but didn’t fly off.bird9_thumb

 

Headed down the river

I headed on back down the river and was soon in the pelicans again.birds10_thumb

 

It turns out there were a lot of little fish in the estuary that they were eating, but they were also resting and washing and preening too.

Mouth area

I paddled on down to the open mouth where the river flows into the ocean and this was the scene.mouth11_thumb

 

I hung around the mouth area for awhile  just sitting in my boat watching the goings on.mouth12_thumb

 

It was getting late in the day so I started heading back up the river towards the boat ramp going by these pelicans feeding in the shallows.pels14_thumb

 

This one got pretty close to me.pel_thumb2

 

Boat ramp

I made it to the boat ramp and crossed over to it.jenner15_thumb1

 

Sundown

And got my car and loaded up my boat. The sun is on it’s way down for the day, looking down the river from the boat ramp.sun_thumb

 

Tired out

That was a nice day but something about going to the ocean tires one out and I sure was, so I went to bed early last night.

Today

Today, Marty came by to finalize our plans for a trip we will be taking in about a week.

Up into the hills

After we had that all figured out, we took a ride up into the forest to throw some small rocks and sticks off the roads and to have a nice ride around the hills.. I took a rope with us to try and pull that big tree off the hill that we left there the other day, but the little quad runner was too small to budge it.

We rode around and stopped and hiked out a trail then headed on home.

Nice day.

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