Tuesday July 8, 2014 Jenner CA.
The birds are still fishing the Russian River estuary, heavily
I arrived at Jenner around 10:30 AM this morning and put my boat in the water and headed on up the river at my usual slow pace.
Some white pelican’s were taking it easy on the east end of Penny Island as I paddled on by.
I paddled up the river and switched over to the north shore heading towards Paddy’s rock. There were a bunch of merganser ducks fishing away, which I followed up to Paddy’s rock, where they went to shore and started preening.
Nap time
I paddled on by and crossed back over the river to rat nest beach where I seemed to have needed a little nap.
After I was rested up, I paddled on down to otter’s log and went ashore. Just about that time, Ken came by in his double kayak with his dog. We shot the bull for a bit, then he went on up stream and I went on down stream.
I took the back channel of penny island.
There were a bunch of birds, terns, sitting on the west end of Penny Island. I maneuvered for a picture and got this one across the island to the visitor center. The picture makes it look like the birds are closer to the center then they really are. That’s Ken loading his boat at the ramp.
River’s mouth area
I headed on down to the river’s mouth area. There were a lot of harbor seals and birds on the beach taking it easy.
Some of the birds on the shore, cormorants, brown pelicans and turkey vultures.
The brown pelicans were flying in and out, some landing and some flying off to somewhere?
Sometimes there is more there than what I can see
Because of the harbor seals being protected and all, I cant’ get too close to things down at the mouth area, so sometimes, I just shot pictures and see what I have when I get them back on my computer and I sometimes see things I didn’t see with my eyes.
Dead harbor seal
Somehow, I missed this dead harbor seal the vultures were working on, as I was taking pictures of these brown pelicans.
The brown pelicans are doing something?
Just to the right of the dead seal were these two pelicans doing something weird, so I took some photos of them. I couldn’t see the stick they had, until later on my computer.
They seem to be fighting or playing with the stick in this picture, when I first saw them, remember I can’t see the stick.
Then the one on the left got it and did this? This is the one that caught my attention when I was looking through my pics on my computer. I have no idea what it is doing?
The one on the right got the stick back from the one on the left.
The one on the left did this. Note the one on the right has the stick.
And then they did this and then I moved on not knowing about the stick and who knows what they did after I left?
Watching for feeding birds
Since there was a lot of bird type feeding going on lately, I was watching for birds feeding.
As I headed back in for the day, I passed these cormorants fishing away, doing a lot of splashing.
I followed the cormorants trying to get a good picture of them and found this one in the bunch I took. Several of the cormorants have caught fish in this picture.
The fishing seemed to be good and a couple harbor seals were fishing with the cormorants too. Here is one of the harbor seals. I’m sure they get their share of the fish.
Other birds join in on the feed
I watched this osprey dive and miss it’s fish.
The biologists are busy tagging fish for tracking
As I approached the take out area, I could see the biologists on the shore tagging fish for tracking. They were hard at it, so I didn’t bother them. :O)
Checking out the spring water pipes for leaks
I pulled my boat out and went on home. I wanted to go up and check out the spring’s water lines down to the tanks for leaks. In the dry season, later this summer, animals sometimes chew holes in the black plastic pipe that feeds spring water to the holding tanks, as this pipe is just laying on the ground coming down the hill.
This is one of the roads I took to get up to the water lines to check out.
I checked out several places along the lines. It’s mostly straight up and down where this pipe runs, so I got a good work out.
Found some leaks to fix
This is one of the water lines that animals had chewed holes into before I taped it up. I can just tape it up as there is no pressure in this line. The water just runs in it down the hill to the water tanks, almost straight down the hill.
That was a bit of a chore walking up and down the hills following the plastic pipe and repairing it.
Measuring the amount of water coming from the springs
After I repaired the pipes, I went down to the water tanks and measured the water coming down the main lines. Two gallons from the left line and one gallon from the right line for a total of three gallons a minute. I opened the valve to let all three gallons run into our tanks.
That’s 3960 gallons of water in twenty four hours, which feeds five houses.
I’m happy with that.
Nice day.