My friend Anne from Denver sent me this link to NOAA which identifies the sharks as Pacific Spiny Dogfish sharks just as Dan, in comments, said they were. The link may be helpful for identifying some of the critters I see in the estuary. Thanks Ann.
The fog was lifting and the wind was down as I drove into Jenner this morning. Once I got my boat in the water, I paddled across to Penny Island which looked like this.
It took me awhile to decide which way to go today, but I finally decided to go down and have a look at the closed river mouth, so I headed down this side of Penny Island toward the mouth area.
Bathing terns
As I crossed over the open water just down from the lower end of Penny Island I could see some birds doing something in the water so I paddled on over to have a look see.
It appeared some terns were taking baths in the water, doing a lot of splashing.
Closed river mouth
I paddled on down to the closed river mouth. Not too much happening down that way today. Some birds and some seals were resting on the beach in front of beacon rock.
Pelicans and seagulls
I didn’t’ stay too long down that way and headed back up the river where I went past these birds on the water.
There were a bunch of seagulls and some brown pelicans just sitting around on the water. These two pelicans look like males to me, see the yellow color on their heads.
An island walk
I decided to go for a little walk on the upper end of Penny Island so I made my way over there and put my boat ashore here in the grass.‘
I walked past these big old eucalyptus trees and past the old milk barn.
I worked my way into the center of the island which is very brushy with lots of berry bushes too. Ouch. I did get a few stickers in my hand.
Herons
I got back in my boat and headed on up the river a short distance where this great blue heron was resting on an old redwood log.
Not far from the blue heron was this egret sunning itself and doing some preening too.
I crossed over the river to the other side to see what birds were resting on the shoreline there.
These mallard ducks were taking a snooze while the blackbirds fed behind them.
Just to the left of the ducks where a bunch of geese also resting and getting some sun. Here’s a few of the geese. They watched me close as I passed on by them.
From there I headed on back in for the day going past one of my seal buddies resting on a submerged redwood log.
I passed fairly close as it watched me pass. This is one of the seals that mostly hangs in the river and doesn’t seem to be part of all the other seals that hang by the river’s mouth. There’s four or five of these guys that I see all the time as I paddle around the estuary.
Looking for the will driller guy
I cut it short today and went on in and then headed over to Forestville to see if I could catch the well driller in his office, but when I got there nobody was in the office, so I continued on to the Asian market where I did some shopping and then went back to the well drillers place, but now the place was locked up, everybody must of went home early today.
I went on home myself and had a little nap.
Took that leg killer shelf out
Then I went out and pulled the shelf that holds my gallon jug water bottles out of the van. The shelf that holds them is just above my feet when I sleep in it and the shelf was getting in my way as I bang my legs against it sometimes, so I decided it had to go. I think I can put the water bottles a bit higher on another shelf which I will do later.
Prepping for the pipe repair
From there I went over to my Aunt’s house where I am repairing the creek water pipe crossing that washed out during a storm last winter. I took my shovel as I needed to do some ditch digging before I can repair things. I dug for an hour or so and got about half of the digging done before I was wore out for the day.
I have about another couple hours digging and then I will get some supplies to fix the pipe crossing the creek. This time I will put the pipe higher in the air so the creek can’t hit it when the water gets high. I’m also adding some much needed valves in the system so things are easier to fix next time something goes wrong.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
‘
