The delightful white-throated dippers

I woke early this morning probably because of the light of dawn, and switched on the radio. I heard radio voices whispering as they described watching murmurations of birds on the Somerset levels. It was a lovely way to start the day and at the end of the programme the presenter mentioned there were many old BBC natural history programmes available to download. I went back to sleep but when I fully awoke I did check on the archive and found a programme which I then listened to  describing looking for dippers' nests under bridges of the rivers in the Welsh mountains.

I immediately wanted to go to our local river where I knew dippers nested under a bridge, as I have blipped here before. I gathered myself, made coffee and headed down to the River Frome at Capel's Mill where a footbridge crosses the river directly beneath the railway viaduct built over the ruins of the old mill race.

Within a few minutes of arriving I saw a dipper on these rocks in the middle of the river just below where it falls over the old stone weir. I watched it for a few minutes then saw a second dipper flying up past me to the footbridge. I walked a few yards upstream and settled down on the remnants of the large old stone walls and spent about an hour watching the pair of dippers as they flew back and forth with very varied bits of material for building their nest. They would disappear then return and fly up to the underside of the footbridge where I presume they were busy building. A few minutes later and they would drop down from the nest towards the river about two metres below them before flying either up or downstream again.

They would often return to the nearby banks or the stones in the river itself and do a bit of fishing underwater which is their speciality. Sometimes they would gather together and sing on the river bank, always close to the water, all of which appeared to be part of the pair bonding. At one time, I saw one of them, which I presume was the male, dive into the water to retrieve a brown beech leaf, and then fly up out of the water and head for these rocks. The female stood close to where I was on the old mill building ruins and watched as the male flew around in circles proudly showing off this large colourful leaf.

I took this shot quite early on after it had gathered the twig in its mouth, landed on this rock and then flew up to the nest area. I then concentrated on trying to get shots of them in flight as they approached the nest. I caught quite a few shots of them with mouthfuls of all sorts of strange materials, some hard and some soft. But the light was very poor so that I had to use high iso and the results weren't great images. This picture was also a bit soft as my shutter speed was slow.

But I had a lovely time with many moments of mirth watching and appreciating them. I must try and come back with my powerful flash unit and see if I can get good close ups of them in flight.

In case you are interested and able to access them, here is the download site for The Living World – River dippers programme.