The Turkey Vultures Get Their Share of Salmon

Friday October 9, 2015 Jenner CA.

Coolant leak

I topped off my radiator coolant before I left for Jenner this morning to make sure I had enough in there for what was going to leak out while on the road. It’s a small leak so I should be ok, or the car should be anyway.

The sun was out and the wind was down as I arrived at the boat ramp today and there were very few others on the water.

I dressed for a warm day and paddled across the river to Penny Island and decided to go on up the river a ways, not far. I paddled along here with Penny Island on the right.

I passed by this great blue heron doing some fishing by the shoreline. There are a lot of little tiny fish in the water right now, about two inches long. I don’t know what kind they are, but the heron was doing well feeding on them.

Grotto

I worked my way along the shore up to this spot I call Dead Deer Grotto where I sat and sorta napped for a bit with maybe a little day dreaming thrown in too.

Just before I pulled under the trees in the grotto, I saw a turkey vulture sitting on the hill just above it. As I watched  this other vulture flew in and pushed the other bird off it’s perch.

Eventually I got tired of sitting in that spot and moved across the river headed to Paddy’s rock where I spotted these merganser ducks resting on the gravel.

I paddled around Paddy’s rock and ran into this great blue heron posing like this, low to the water to catch little fish.

What do the vultures have over there

On past the heron I could see some turkey vultures doing something up ahead so I approached to see what they were up to.

It seems they had found a dead salmon, likely from a seal or sea lion kill that got away. Note the vulture on the right has a blackish head which I think is the young bird from the nest this summer.  It stayed as I approached when most of the other birds left and for that it got some of the fish while most of the other birds had to wait their turn.

While  I was watching the vultures, these two showed up just a little off shore and checked out the vultures eating the fish. The seagull went over and joined the birds and I was watching to see if the seal would go to shore and take the fish from the vultures, but it didn’t do that.

I moved closer to get a better view of the big fish. I assume this is a salmon as that’s’ what’s running right now. I’m not good at identifying most of these big fish.

Added: Pete in Comments identified this fish as a King/Chinook Salmon in the above picture. Pete fishes the river around the Guerneville Area.Thanks Pete

Open river’s mouth

I let the vultures get back to eating their fish and headed down river towards the river’s open mouth area.

Here I’m traveling through the fresh water weeds that grew during the time the mouth was closed. There’s some coots off to the right down there eating the green weeds.

There were a couple kingfishers up ahead flying off and back onto this stump and I was able to get a couple pictures from a distance.

Here’s the coots eating some of the green weeds. They come here during the fall to feed on these weeds which are usually dried up and brown by now which they dive down to eat. But this year most of the weeds are still green and they still seem to like to eat them. The open mouth is in the background where I’m headed.

My spot

I pulled into my spot in the open mouth and sat and watched the goings on for awhile. The ocean was fairly rough today.

There were lots of birds and harbor seals on the sandy beach across from me.

At least until a helicopter flew by and scared all the birds into the air.

I was getting tired out, being by the ocean and all, so I headed on in for the day.

I paddled through the weeds on the way back to the boat ramp.

I went on home for a nap and then Steve came by with some gaskets to fix my car’s coolant leak which I will eventually fix. We shot the bull for a bit and that was about it for the day.