The phone rang this morning before I got it going. I answered it, which I don’t normally do before I get booted up. It was my dentist. Unfortunately, she found that I needed to have some work done on one of my roots and was referring me to her husband which does that kind of work. Of course that translates to some big money. Not a good way to start the day, but what has to be done, has to be done.
Off to the river
It looked like another nice day at Jenner this morning with the sun out and the wind down. I put my boat in the water and went over to check out these fishing cormorants that were diving right in front of the boat ramp. There were a bunch of harbor seals and a few sea lions fishing with the cormorants making some big waves and some big splashes.
They all moved quickly up the river following the fish that were trying to escape them.
I turned around and looked back at the guys working on the new roof for the visitor center thinking it’s looking good.
Fishing pelicans
The brown pelicans were fishing right around me, flying overhead looking for fish to dive on. Trying to get diving pictures of them is a pain, so I passed on that.
I watched them for a bit, then crossed over to Penny Island and up the side, headed down river going past these birds feeding along the shoreline. A great blue heron and some mallard ducks.
Paddled down to the mouth area
I sat at the lower end of Penny Island for awhile, then crossed over the open water headed to the river’s mouth area. I could see some big waves crashing over the jetty and a lot of foam in the water. It was high tide and some of the ocean water was coming into the river over the sandbar with the big waves making all the foam.
There were a dozen or so harbor seals right where the ocean water was coming over the sand bar, maybe looking to catch some fish. They had to be there for something as it wasn’t an easy place to stay with all the waves breaking over.
Here’s some of the harbor seals that looked like they were waiting there for something to eat.
The C-6 seal
I paddled on down to the end of the river and was sitting there watching all the seals swimming around in the water, some coming quite close, when I noticed this one. Was that a camera I’m seeing mounted on it’s head or what?
I barely got the picture and it dove and I didn’t see it again.
I couldn’t tell what was on it’s head until I got home and blew the picture up. It looks like a number tag which reads C-6. I’ve never seen this on a seal in the estuary before. I’ve never seen any kind of marking tags on any of them.
Scared me
After awhile, I left the mouth area and was paddling along when this pelican dove in next to me, scaring me and making a big splash. I think it missed and was now just getting ready to take off into the air.
Muskrat area
I continued working my way up the river, past Penny Island and on up to the muskrat area, just ahead.
I like to just sit in this area enjoying the warming sun and watching things and some times dozing a bit.
This least grebe swim by close. It was diving and looking for things to eat. I didn’t see it catch anything.
I hang around that area for an hour or so, then paddled across the river to look for birds along the shoreline. Not too many birds there today.
Lots of cormorants on the estuary
However, there were about a hundred cormorants resting on the gravel by Paddy’s rock. Here’s just some of them.
I continued on back towards the boat ramp where I saw another bunch of cormorants diving and fishing away. Here’s just a few of the flock. Most of the other ones are under the water fishing.
I’m not sure what kind of fish the pelicans and cormorants are eating, but there seems to a lot of them around right now whatever they are.
I took my boat out of the water and went on home. It was cool outside, so I didn’t feel like doing much and instead hit the couch for a nap.
I did call and make an appointment with the root dentist for Monday.That was quick, they must think the tooth is pretty bad. :O)
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.
