Water-Ousel
"Three hungry
mouths, which
were opened wide
to receive the food"
Although the dipper is not a web-footed bird, and is not classed by the naturalists among the aquatic fowl, but is, indeed, a genuine passerine, yet he can swim quite dexterously on the surface of the water. However, his greatest strength and skill are shown in swimming under water, where he propels himself with his wings, often to a considerable distance, either with or against the current. Sometimes he will allow the current to carry him a short distance down the stream, but he is always able to stop himself at a chosen point. "Ever and anon," says Mr. John Muir, in his attractive book on "The Mountains of California," "while searching for food in the rushing stream, he sidles out to where the too powerful current carries him off his feet; then he dexterously rises on the wing and goes gleaning again in shallower places." So it seems that our little acrobat is equal to every emergency that may arise in his adventurous life.
In winter, when the rushing mountain streams are flowing with the sludge of the half-melted snow, so that he cannot see the bottom, where most of his delicacies lie, he betakes himself to the quieter stretches of the rivers, or to the mill ponds or mountain lakes, where he finds clearer and smoother water, although a little deeper than he usually selects. Such weather does not find him at the end of his resources; no, indeed! Having betaken himself to a lake, he does not at once plunge into its depths after the manner of a duck, but finding a perch on a snag or a fallen pine, he sits there a moment, and then, flying out thirty or forty yards, "he alights with a dainty glint on the surface, swims about, looks down, finally makes up his mind, and disappears with a sharp stroke of his wings." So says Mr. John Muir, who continues: "After feeding for two or three minutes he suddenly reappears, showers the water from his wings with one vigorous shake, and rises abruptly into the air as if pushed up from beneath, comes back to his perch, sings a few minutes, and goes out to dive again; thus coming and going, singing and diving, at the same place for hours."
The depths to which the cinclid dives for the food on the bottom is often from fifteen to twenty feet. When he selects a river instead of a lake for his winter bathing, its waters, like those of the shallower streams, may also contain a large quantity of sludge, thus rendering them opaque even to the sharp little eyes of the dipper. Then what does he do? He has a very natural and cunning way of solving this problem; he simply seeks a deep portion of the river and dives through the turbid water to the clear water beneath, where he can plainly see the "goodies" on the bottom.
It must not be thought that this little bird is mute amid all the watery tumult of his mountain home, for he is a rare vocalist, his song mingling with the ripple and gurgle and roar of the streams that he haunts. Nor does he sing only in the springtime, but all the year round, on stormy days as well as fair. During Indian summer, when the streams are small, and silence broods over many a mountain solitude, the song of the ousel falls to its lowest ebb; but when winter comes and the streams are converted into rolling torrents, he resumes his vocal efforts, which reach their height in early summer. Thus it would seem that the bird's mood is the gayest when his favorite stream is dashing at its noisiest and most rapid pace down the steep mountain defiles. The clamor of the stream often drowns the song of the bird, the movement of his mandibles being seen when not a sound from his music-box can be heard. There must be a feeling of fellowship between the bird and the stream he loves so well.
"No snowstorm can discourage him"
You will not be surprised to learn that the dipper is an extremely hardy bird. No snowstorm, however violent, can discourage him, but in the midst of it all he sings his most cheerful lays, as if defying all the gods of the winds. While other birds, even the hardy nuthatches, often succumb to discouragement in cold weather, and move about with fluffed-up feathers, the very picture of dejection—not so the little dipper, who always preserves his cheerful temper, and is ready to say, in acts, if not in words: "Isn't this the jolliest weather you ever saw?" Away up in Alaska, where the glaciers hold perpetual sway, this bird has been seen in the month of November as glad and blithesome as were his comrades in the summery gorges of New Mexico.