Northern Observations of Inland Birds 169 



white front is invisible, and whether it be only his white 

 front or only his ** black " back that one sees, neither by 

 itself bears any resemblance to a bird. So his colouring 

 breaks his outline, and his invisibility lies in his 

 ** conspicuous " markings. 



A blackbird amidst the surroundings of a dipper is 

 highly conspicuous, yet this little bird of the waterways, 

 seated among his native pebbles, is invisible till he bobs. 

 The habit of bobbing is very curious, and almost peculiar 

 to birds of the water's edge — the sandpiper, the wag- 

 tails, and the dipper affording the three most striking 

 examples. Why do they bob and waggle as they do ? 

 It strikes me as being an infectious habit, that possibly 

 they have caught from one another, but there must be 

 some very good reason for it. Is it that thereby they 

 disturb and render visible the insect life on which they 

 feed so largely ? I hardly think so, as the dipper at 

 any rate depends chiefly on aquatic larvae. It may be 

 that they are so well camouflaged that this waggling is 

 necessary in order to enable them to find each other as 

 they pass hither and thither in their rapid flight. At all 

 events I have repeatedly noticed that the appearance of 

 a second dipper or of a second sandpiper immediately 

 has the effect of making the one seated at the water's 

 edge begin to bob or waggle, as though to attract 

 notice. 



The dipper rejoices in a vast variety of chosen haunts, 

 but clear and shallow water is best beloved by it. Numbers 

 of them bred in a deep gully near to the home of my 

 boyhood. The mountain stream was scarcely eighteen 

 feet in width, and for a matter of two miles it wound its 

 course through a deep gully which cut the range clean 

 in two. The depth of the cutting varied from eighty 

 feet to two hundred — a vault-like, dripping corridor, cool 

 as a cellar even in midsummer, fragrant with the spray of 



