Tuesday August 4, 2015 Jenner CA.
I headed on over to Santa Rosa this morning taking my van to give it a test to see how the new radiator worked out and check for any leaks. Everything worked out well and it’s not over heating. Of course today wasn’t very warm, but at least I know it’s not leaking any fluid. I did some shopping for stuff for my up coming trip.
Headed out kayaking
I got home early enough to head out for Jenner around three PM. Steve’s car was in the parking lot, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight with his boat.
I think most of the little fish left the estuary
I noticed right away that all the birds that were here yesterday diving on fish weren’t here today. I was curious about that, so I headed on down to the river’s mouth, where it was high tide and lots of water was pouring into the river, but almost no birds where down there. All those hundreds of brown pelicans and terns were mostly gone today.
I paddled on down to the end of the river and sat in front of some brown pelicans taking it easy on the sand.
Pelican bills
While watching them I noticed this pelican doing something strange. It seemed to be stretching it’s pouch over it’s chest.
And it wasn’t the only one doing it.
Some pointed their big bills into the air like this apparently to stretch.
Their bills do make interesting pictures.
While I was sitting there in my boat, I had dug my paddle into the sand so my boat wouldn’t drift away. Only trouble was I wasn’t paying attention and drifted away from my paddle stuck in the sand. Lucky we have hands that make pretty good paddles so I was able to get back to my paddle. And lucky the wind and the current were weak enough for me to get back to my paddle.
I didn’t see Steve down that way so I suspected he went up the river a ways. And that’s the direction I headed going by this great blue heron.
I also went over to check out these birds on the lower end of Penny Island. Some terns resting on the gravel.
As I was paddling by the upper end of the island, I noticed this other great blue heron up in the eucalyptus tree.
I continued on up the river stopping along the way. The light wind was blowing up river, so I mostly just drifted along slowly with the wind.
I ended up here at the mouth of Willow Creek were I decided to wait for Steve to come back down the river as this was as far as I wanted to go.
Eventually, I saw Steve paddling down the other side of the river, so I just waited in the grass to see if he would see me or not. He didn’t and paddled on by. I started after him and caught up to him just under the highway one bridge.
I wanted to know if there were many birds up river diving on fish. Apparently there were only a few of them diving for fish. Nothing like yesterday.
Osprey
We continued on down the river taking our time. I saw this osprey land in a tree up ahead so was watching for it as we passed.
Sunset
The sun was just starting to set as we approached the upper end of Penny Island headed on in for the day, about 8:30PM.
It was still rather nice out, but it was time to go on home so we did.
Nice day on the river.