Last week at Salmon Tours, a volunteer called my attention to an ordinary looking brown bird about six inches long. The extraordinary thing about this bird was that she was wading in the stream, repeatedly dipping her head in the water. While behaving somewhat like a duck, this bird was obviously a songbird. Fittingly, the name of this bird is the American Dipper.
I read what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology had to say about this bird on its website. I found out the Dipper is America’s only truly aquatic songbird. The Dipper eats the bugs and larvae found in the rocky bottoms of flowing streams. They wade, swim and dive from the air into the water for food. Dippers share habitat with Salmon and depend on the aquatic insects that also feed the fingerling Salmon. So, like Salmon, Dippers are susceptible to pollution that could eliminate their prey.
Dippers weave a ball- like nest near the fast moving stream. The female first dips materials into water as she weaves a two layer nest. She creates an outer shell 8-10 inches in diameter made of moss. The inner chamber is a woven cup of 2-3 inches made of grass, leaves and bark. This is an ingenious way to keep her brood dry. Dippers have a clutch of four or five eggs and have one or two broods per year.
American Dippers are monogamous, but couples generally split up for a solitary life after the chicks’ fledging.
These birds can be seen here all winter long. They survive the cold snaps because they have a thick coat of feathers and a low metabolic rate. They have a tinkling song and a sharp call that sounds like, “zeet”. They are unmistakable when seen dipping in the stream. Look for these Dippers wading in a Salmon stream near you.
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