The sun was out and the wind was down to a stiff breeze this morning as I put my boat in the water and paddled across to the upper end of Penny Island where I sat here in this spot just enjoying the day, looking up river.
I paddled on up and over to the north side of the river to see what birds might be resting in this spot. There were a couple turkey vultures just sitting there. I thought they were just resting and didn’t think they had something to eat, until this crow flew over and picked something up in it’s beak, which you can see in the picture. The vultures must have been full of whatever it was they were eating.
Moving on up the river along the shoreline, these geese honked a lot as I passed on by. As the other kayaker approached they took to the air honking.
I worked my way up to the bridge, then started on back down the other side of the river taking my time paddling along at a slow pace, stopping here and there.
Just after entering the island’s back channel I stopped in this spot for a bit before continuing on down the channel.
About half way down the channel, I paddled over into this spot that was flooded and stopped for a bit more, looking down towards the ocean.
When I continued on, a kingfisher flew by me and landed on this stick not too far ahead of me and actually stayed long enough to get a couple pictures of it before it flew off, over the Island.
I paddled on into the flooded Penny Island on the lower end and looked around a bit.
Paddling back out of the flooded island I saw this great blue heron resting by the palm tree growing there. It just looked at me and wasn’t going to give up it’s choice spot so didn’t fly off.
River’s mouth is closed
I was headed down to the closed river’s mouth area across the water. Lots of birds resting down that way on the sandy beach.
The waves were down today, but there was an occasional big one.
Lots of birds, mostly seagulls and some brown pelicans.
This brown pelican was taking a bath as I watched. They sure know how to splash the water up onto themselves when they need a bath.
I hung around the mouth area for a spell. The wind stayed down today which makes for a real good day.
When I was leaving the mouth area, I paddled by these two western grebe. Sometimes they swim around with their necks retracted like the one on the left.
Water level is rising
I paddled back over to Penny Island and went on down the north side headed back to the boat ramp where I had a look at the water level gage at the visitor center. Almost eight feet, it raised up about six inches since yesterday. The water agency should breech the sand dam at the river’s mouth, opening up the river to the ocean, when it gets to nine feet, which should be in a couple days or so if the river keeps rising at it’s current rate.
I put the boat on the car and drove on home for a nap.
Old bridge needs repairs
After a bit, I went out in the yard and did some puttering around. One of the things I did was prune back a lot of the blackberry vines around an old bridge that goes over to my brother’s house. I need to do some repairs on it before winter. A lot of the boards are rotting out under it, on it’s bulkhead that the bridge is placed on, so I need to figure out a way to prop it all up to keep the creek from washing it all out. I’ve got some ideas for that.
The rest of the day, I just sat around the yard and enjoyed the nice evening.
Good photo of the Kingfisher. I’ve seen plenty of them almost every time I go out, but I’ve never gotten a good photo of one yet. Elusive birds! I love how the scold you when you get too near.
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Header Pictures
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.
Good photo of the Kingfisher. I’ve seen plenty of them almost every time I go out, but I’ve never gotten a good photo of one yet. Elusive birds! I love how the scold you when you get too near.