Wednesday March 4, 2015 Jenner CA.
Yesterday, I saw one of the seal ladies from the water agency up on the overlook checking seals, so today, I drove down there to see if she was there today. She wasn’t, but there were two other volunteer seal ladies there. I talked with them a bit.
Open river’s mouth
This was my view looking down at the open Russian River’s mouth, looking out into the Pacific. The river’s mouth is on the left and the end of the river is on the right. Scenic. :O)
Kayaking
From there I went to the boat ramp and put my boat in the water and paddled across to Penny Island where these two deer caught my eye. They were watching me to see if it was safe for them to continue feeding. As I watched, they continued feeding and I moved on up the river.
The wind was down and the sun was out as I made my way up the river, just past eagle’s landing. Nice out, eh.
Lots of cormorants
Off to my left was a bunch of cormorants resting on the beach. They usually rest here once they get their belly’s full of fish. I counted about 175 in this bunch.
I watched as some goldeneye ducks swam by feeding as they went. They dive in the water to feed.
I paddled up to Muskrat nest beach where I sat for a bit, then headed back down the river on the south side and went down the back channel of Penny island. This was my view as I went by this big old redwood stump. I’m just coming out of the back channel headed to the river’s open mouth.
More cormorants are at the river’s mouth
There were two groups of cormorants at the mouth with a couple hundred harbor seals. I didn’t count the cormorants in these groups, but there were a lot of them.
Resting great egret
I also noticed a great white egret on the shore in back of some ducks, as this bird flew into the picture.
I hung around the mouth area for about an hour then headed back towards the boat ramp.
What’s the heron got?
Near the lower end of Penny Island I was watching this great blue heron fishing and it picked up this. Not sure what it was, but it swallowed it.
The king fishers torment me
I saw this king fisher up ahead on a redwood stump and it sat long enough for me to get a photo of it. King fishers are such teasers as they sit and wait for the moment you rise the camera, then fly off. At least most of the time. They don’t usually let me get close to them either. They fly away, giving an alarm call, a chittering as they go.
This old house
I passed by this old house they’ve been working on. The guys in front of the house seem to be building a deck just below the main windows and the guy on the machine is drilling holes for a retaining wall.
Puttering in the yard
I hit the boat ramp shortly after that and went on home. It was a nice spring day, so I went out in the yard to see about accomplishing some things.
First, I dug some rocky dirt to fill this sink hole in my driveway. This place used to have redwood trees in excess of twenty foot diameters growing everywhere, which also means there were a lot of big roots too. They rot and sink holes may develop just about anywhere. Lucky they aren’t’ too big. I put the dirt in the hole and got the hose and watered it down to help compact it. Once the dirt settles, I’ll put some of the pavement back on top of the rocky dirt.
Blooms everywhere
After that, I went out here to my blueberry patch which is also my potato patch which looks like this on the left. I have some plum trees blooming right now too.
Moving redwood mulch
I was moving the redwood mulch pile on the left to the blueberry patch behind the pile. There’s also a lot of potatoes in the patch which I hope will start growing when it gets a bit warmer. I worked until my back said to stop, well, maybe a little after it said to stop.
Enjoying the evening
So now that my back was hurting a bit, I found a chair a and spent the rest of the day sitting around enjoying the evening in the yard.
Nice day.