DIPPERS are singing and skirmishing along rocky streams. They are like large wrens with their turned-up tail, but they have a white breast and a chestnut-coloured band across the stomach. They are restless birds, bobbing up and down and flicking their tail on a boulder in the stream, then plunging into the water and walking submerged along the bed of the stream to find such food as the larvae of caddis flies. These larvae lurk in a tube made of sand and other scraps of debris, but the dippers are skilful at extricating them. They have a conspicuous white eyelid, which is continually blinking, to protect their eyes from the water.
The males and females each hold separate territories along the stream in winter, but just now they are pairing up, and there are many disputes as the territorial boundaries dissolve and reform. The contestants chase each other, or stand on a rock singing, with their beak lifted high to display their white breast to their opponent. Their song is a sweet, rippling trill, not unlike a wren’s. They will build their domed, mossy nest, often on a ledge or in a hole under a bridge, in February.
DJM