HARD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



175 



appeared some short time ago. It is a communication 

 by Mr. Kerr. He says, speaking of a correspondent, 

 Mr. T. Lister, " Formerly the dipper or water ouzel, 

 used to be very plentiful on the various Derbyshire 

 trout streams : but in my last three or four visits to 

 Miller's Dale and the neighbourhood I did not see 

 one. The keepers destroy them, saying they eat the 

 spawn of the trout. I have tried to convince one or 

 t wo of these gunners that they made a mistake in shoot- 

 ing this merry little bird, but in vain. Have you ever 

 watched the action of the dipper ? I have, with great 

 interest, in years gone by. I used to go for a bit of 

 salmon-lishing to the South of Ireland, and in the 

 liitle river Cora, about twenty miles beyond Killinney, 

 the dipper used to be quite common ; but on my last 

 two or three visits I did not see a single bird — killed, 

 ruthlessly killed, on the (not proven) charge of eat- 

 ing salmon spawn. Mr. John Hancock and other 

 competent naturalists have, by the dissection of birds 

 killed on spawning beds, clearly proved that the birds 

 so killed were not preying on the spawn, but on the 

 water insects and larvse which were preying on the 

 ova of the fish. Yet the ruthless slaughter still goes 

 on." 



Mr. Robert Buchanan, in an article on the birds of 

 the Hebrides, says : " I hear for the first time, on 

 the authority of Dr. Gray, that the ouzel has been 

 proscribed and decimated in many highland parishes, 

 because, forsooth, he is supposed to interfere with 

 the rights of human fishermen ! In former times, 

 whoever slew one of these lovely birds received as 

 his reward the privilege of fishing in the close 

 season ; and a reward of sixpence a head is this day 

 given for the 'water craw ' in some parts of Suther- 

 landshire. To such a pass come mortal ignorance 

 and greed I — ignorance, here quite unaware that the 

 ouzel never touches the spawn of fish at all ; and 

 greed, umvilling to grant to a bird so gentle and so 

 beautiful even a share of the prodigal gifts of nature." 



The evidence of the authorities which I have quoted 

 elsewhere, in favour of the bird, are the late Mr. F. 

 Buckland, the late Mr J. K. Lord, the Zoological 

 Society, &c., and my own experience. 



And it is only lately, though I have been studying 

 the dipper for some years, that I have evidence of 

 its eating fish, and this I believe only very occasionally. 

 The following from a correspondent in the lake 

 district, a keen observer of birds, is very interesting 

 on this point. "This summer (1881) I saw the 

 dipper in pursuit of a minnow in a small pool of water 

 about two feet deep and two or three yards in extent, 

 which it caught after a good deal of turning and 

 twisting about, using its wings like the flappers of a 

 seal. After securing the fish, it flew a couple of yards 

 to be safe from the water, and then gave the fish a 

 peck upon the shoulder and after a second or tivo 

 another on the tail, and then after a second or two 

 more, it took it up and swallowed it head first. A 

 few minutes after this I saw the dipper take another 



minnow from under a stone in shallow water, which 

 it demolished in a minute or two, eating it the same 

 way as it did the first. Before seeing this I had my 

 doubts about this bird taking small fish or fry. Yet 

 they cannot do much harm, I think." I know another 

 good naturalist who has observed the same thing. 

 My belief that it only occasionally resorts to a fish- 

 diet, is from the fact that so seldom is fish, or the 

 remains of fish, found in the stomach of the dead bird ; 

 this is borne out by many eminent naturalists, and 

 having been at many inquests upon the dipper I 

 could certainly with a clear conscience have given a 

 verdict of not guilty of fish eating. As to the ova, I 

 know of no single case where they ever^formed part of 

 the contents of a dipper's stomach. A nest of young 

 dippers taken from this neighbourhood and forward- 

 ed to London, were kept for some time solely on the 

 larva of the stone fly {Perla bicaiidata). Trout and 

 the dipper s^em to agree well together, for the most 

 prolific trout stream that I know of in Cumberland 

 is certainly the one on which you will see most 

 dippers in the shortest distance. 



I have a pet theory of my own, that when pile- 

 wort {Rauuficithts Ficarid) begins to bloom, the dipper 

 begins to build. Now the pile-wort was in bloom 

 on Feb. 6th, so to-day I snatched a few hours from 

 business to see if the dippers were at work. Nor 

 was I altogether disappointed, though I passed half- 

 a-dozen pairs of birds, but only the favourite sites 

 for building on the side of the river on which I was, 

 yet I found one new nest about three parts finished, 

 and watched one dipper for some time with a large 

 piece of moss in its bill, so early does it breed. Of 

 course this year it is earlier than usual, owing to the 

 extreme mildness of the season. 



In my walk this afternoon, it struck me from the 

 present state of the Eden, that if the dipper did feed 

 on salmon ova and fry, it would be a good thing for 

 the river, and ought to be encouraged. Every few- 

 yards along the river I was passing dead or diseased 

 salmon and grilse, and the loathsome and leprous 

 look of the dying fish more or less enveloped in their 

 living shroud of fungi, seemed a silent but strong 

 protest against the over-legislation and preservation 

 with which to every thinking person, the Eden is bur- 

 dened. And this disease has been going on some 

 time, as hundreds of fish have been taken out of the 

 water and buried by the water-bailiffs : hundreds 

 more which have been taken out by others than 

 water bailiffs, while every tide of the Solway leaves 

 its quota of dead fish upon the shores. 



Another item connected with the dipper which 

 was plainly to be observed to-day : if the Cynclus 

 feeds upon salmon ova, as generally stated, we 

 would expect at this time of year, when the spawning 

 beds are full of eggs, to find it flocking there. But 

 such is not the case, the birds being scattered im- 

 partially ^long the river without seeming to fancy 

 any particular portion. 



