Where to go looking for Dipper this month.
SOME birds are so closely associated with certain habitats that you won’t see them anywhere else. Water is essential for Dippers. Usually this will be a fast-flowing stream, whether a broad river with faster slides and eddies or a narrower one through overhanging trees, so long as there are scattered logs or rocks for it to stand on. In winter you might get one near a lakeside or even briefly near the coast.
My old RSPB colleague Mike Everett once drew a cartoon showing ‘a line from the Humber to the Severn’ – you need to go north or west of this to find a Dipper. Scan both ways from a bridge or prominent bend in the river and look for rocks with white droppings as a clue to the species’ presence. With luck, there will be a stocky, dark bird, a little smaller than a thrush, standing on the water’s edge and bouncing as if on springs; head on, it shows a unique bold white bib.
Watch how a Dipper will swim and dive, or simply walk into the water, to feed on the bottom, held down by the onrush of water over its sleek shape, bent forwards to put downward pressure on the back.
In the east, there is a faint chance of a Dipper at a millstream, perhaps, and such an out-of-range bird should be checked carefully. British Dippers have a brown head and chestnut under the white bib, but vagrant Continental Black-bellied Dippers lack the chestnut and have a blacker head. Rob Hume