Learn about North America's only aquatic songbirds
The Peregrine Audubon Society will host a zoom presentation on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. Taking a deep dip with Kate Marianchild: The lives of North America's only aquatic songbirds will be the topic of the presentation. To receive a link, subscribe to the mailing list on the group's home page at https://www. peregrineaudubon.org/.
During her talk about this extraordinary species, Marianchild will show videos and photographs of dippers feeding their babies; flashing their semaphorelike eyes; singing exuberantly; dipping (bobbing up and down), foraging, and building a nest.
She will also share sightings of other species she and her friends saw along the river, including an American mink, as well as borrowed underwater images of dippers doing what they are most famous for: foraging for food on river bottoms.
How many North American songbirds dive fearlessly into raging rapids? How many build large dome-shaped nests of moss and flash bright-white eyelids from their dark interiors? How many forage for food on the bottoms of freezing-cold streams?
Answer: Only one — the American dipper, Cinclus mexicanus (aka “water ouzel”).
Acting on a tip from a friend, Marianchild spent several afternoons during the summer of 2020 searching the upper reaches of the Russian River for a dipper nest. After she finally found a large mossy dome on a boulder ledge over thundering whitewater, she began observing, photographing, and videoing the nesting behaviors of American dippers, returning several times over the season. The following two summers she documented another nest on a boulder several hundred yards downstream from the first.
Biography
Kate Marianchild is the author of “Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals among California's Oaks” (Heyday, 2014). This classic of nature writing is a beautifully written and illustrated romp through California's most life-filled ecosystem. With humor, affection and scientific accuracy, Marianchild profiles the behaviors, social structures, anatomical marvels and interrelationships of 22 species common to California's oak woodlands.
Marianchild lives in a yurt near Ukiah surrounded by six oak species and abundant wildlife. When she is not giving talks, guiding walks or observing nature, she swims, sings and advocates for the preservation of native plants and animals. To learn more, buy signed copies of her book, or watch videos of several of her previous talks, go to katemarianchild.com.