Time To Get Out For a Paddle On the River, Low Wind Day

Tuesday August 16, 2022 Jenner CA.

Paddle day

The wind was down today and I hadn’t been out for a paddle in quite some time, so today was the day to get on out there.

I drove on down to Jenner where the Russian River flows into the Pacific Ocean.

I put my boat in the water and started to paddle across the river to the other side to figure out which way to go today, up or down river.

Foam

As I was paddling across the river I noticed this foam in the water. It meant the ocean was going to high tide and sea water was coming into the river from the ocean. The foam floats on in from the ocean with the water.river1

 

After sitting in my boat for a bit by the shoreline I decided to head on down the river towards the ocean.

Vultures clean things up

I saw these vultures fly up from where they were doing something so I paddled on over to where they flew off from.vultures2

 

The feast

Looks like a dead brown pelican they were feasting on. Not much left of it.meat3

 

I continued on down the river headed to the river’s mouth area, just behind the great blue heron.heron4

 

On the way I passed by these brown pelicans that were bathing and preening in the river’s fresh water.pels

 

I paddled on by all these birds, mostly pelicans and gulls resting on the shoreline at the end of the island.birds7

 

I got close enough to get a few pictures of the preening pelicans.pels8

 

River’s mouth is up ahead

From there I continued my paddle down towards the river’s open mouth, up ahead a bit.river9

 

I  hung around the mouth area for an hour or so, just watching and enjoying the day.

These resting harbor seals kept an eye on me.seals10

 

I stay in the river

There were a lot of birds resting on the shore on the right of the open mouth. The ocean is on the other side of the rocks and sandy area. I stay in the river where it’s safe and I don’t get sea sick.mouth11

 

Here’s some of the birds resting on the sandy beach on the right side of the mouth.birds12

 

Nap time

Eventually I got tired and needed a nap. The ocean tends to do that to you.

So, since the tide was going high, lots of water was flowing in from the ocean, so I just paddled into the current and closed my eyes while the water took  me back up the river at a slow pace. I know better than to fall asleep in my boat as the few seconds on waking up can be a bit unsettling until you realize where you are.

Never seen that before

I drifted by these three pelicans and the one on the right seems to be showing the inside of it’s pouch or something.pelicans13

 

As I drifted up to the boat ramp area I spotted or I should say heard these two crows up in the tree looking for their next meal.crows14

 

The boat got put on the car top and I drove on home.

Headed out on the dirt bike

Once home and after a short nap I hopped on the dirt bike to ride up into the hills for a ride.

I stopped at this downed tree to remove enough of it off the road to get by and continued my ride and eventually rode on home for the day.tree15

 

Nice day.

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Marty and I Do Some Trip Planning and Tom’s Dead Chicken Trail Cam Pictures

Monday August 15, 2022 Guerneville CA.

We trip plan

Marty came by today to continue our planning for a trip we are going to do in about a month.

We sat around the yard and did some planning and looked at some maps and settled on a few things about which way to go, but didn’t cast any plans in stone.

Then we walked around the yard eating berries and fresh fruit.

Trail cam

Marty asked if I had a trail cam he could borrow to check out some stuff in his yard. My brother Tom had all my trail cams. When he came by I asked him to bring one by so he did. He said he couldn’t get the pictures off this cam.

Lots of pictures

We checked and there were over 5000 pics on that cam. I copied the pictures to my computer so I could go through them later, to see what was on there.

We ride up into the hills

After that we rode up into the hills for a ride and to show him the old animal trail I’ve been working on.

Just after we got started on our ride I realized I’d forgotten my camera. I seem to be doing that more lately,  maybe something to do with older age.

At any rate we had a good ride and went up to my cousin’s place to the Top of the World and then down to my trail area.

From there we headed for home where Marty took off for his home.

I did some chair hopping and took care of the chickens.

Trail cam pictures

Since I didn’t have any of my own pics today as I forgot my camera, I decided to go through all those pictures and see what I might see. Tom had put this trail cam out after something killed about 50 of his chickens in one night. He  has a lot of chickens as he sells eggs at the farmer’s market.

Extra work

Tom had a lot of pictures because he wasn’t careful enough how he set up the trail cam. The sunlight made shadows and the weeds in front of the camera triggered it many times each day.

So I had to go through the pics and delete all those false triggered pics and got it all down to 240 pics with critters in them.  My finger got tired of hitting the delete button.

I gave him a copy of those and here’s a few of them.

Quite a few possums were in the pics.IMG_0006possum1

 

The culprit

And here’s the main killer, a bobcat. Night pics aren’t too clear, but I also found the lens was real dirty too, but these give one the idea anyway. This bobcat is hauling a dead chicken away.bobcat3

 

Quite a few foxes went by but none with dead chickens.fox4

 

And the deer came by to eat some of the weeds in front of the camera.deer5

 

And the neighbors big dog came by once. He’s a friendly guy.dog7

 

Lots of squirrels came by. They eat the fruit off the fruit trees.squarrel8

 

And here’s the bobcat taking another dead chicken away on another night.bobcat9

 

Mending things

Tom’s working on  sealing up his fences at this time, patching holes and old rotten chicken wire to keep that bobcat out. It took him a few tries but he finally succeeded in keeping the cat out.

Two foxes go by. The same ones that were over at my place killing chickens at the time, I think. They didn’t seem to get any of Tom’s chickens. They killed four of my birds.foxes12

 

The bobcat goes by again after Tom worked on sealing up his chicken pens. He goes home empty handed, or empty jawed, I guess.bobcat13

 

And the cam caught this dog going by in the daytime.dog14

 

You see all the light in the picture above on the ground. As it moves in the day it triggers lots of pics with no critters in them.

That was it.

Nice day.

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