DIPPER 107 



The water ouzel usually alights on rocks or snags in the mountain 

 streams, but it has been known to alight occasionally in trees near its 

 habitat. Dr. C. Hart Merriam (1899) says: "One afternoon just 

 before dark (6 o'clock) I was surprised to see an ouzel fly up into the 

 dead top of a tree, light on a branch, and climb up several feet on the 

 trunk with his short tail hanging straight down, after the manner of a 

 woodpecker." 



Late one afternoon, Mr. Ehinger (1930) found one of the birds 

 singing "at the foot of the steep bank where they had previously been 

 seen to disappear under the shelving sod and roots." This suggested 

 a nightly roosting place, and "a little careful investigation confirmed 

 this fact as two of the birds at dusk, retired under the cover and did 

 not reappear." 



Everyone who has seen a dipper must have noticed one of its 

 characteristic habits, from which its name may have been derived. 

 When perched on a rock or snag it is almost constantly dipping, nod- 

 ding, or bobbing, or teetering. It has also been called the "teeter 

 bird." But it is not really a teetering like that of the spotted sand- 

 piper, nor is it really nodding, for there is no downward nod of the 

 head or up and down movement of the tail. It is a strictly vertical 

 movement of the whole hody^ accomplished by bending the long legs to 

 a crouching position and then raising them to a high standing position ; 

 this produces a perpendicular movement of the body, up and down, for 

 a distance of an inch or more, and is quite different from such move- 

 ments in other birds. This dipping is rapid, often at the rate of from 

 40 to 60 times a minute, or about once a second. Mr. Steiger (1940) 

 suggests that, as the dipper "does not seem to have one consistent call 

 note for its mate," as the noise of rushing torrents often makes its voice 

 difficult to hear, and as its sombre coloring offers no very conspicuous 

 recognition mark, we may "interpret the dipping as an effective device 

 for communication. This bobbing serves as a wig-wag, drawing the 

 attention of the mate, or, when used by young, to draw the attention 

 of parent birds. The logic of this explanation finds support in two 

 behavior patterns. Flush the Dipper and you will note repeatedly that 

 upon alighting again the dipping will be more frequent. Each time the 

 bird takes a new location, this increased dipping is striking. It is also 

 clear that older birds do not resort to dipping so frequently as the 

 young." 



Notwithstanding the fact that the dipper prefers to live in the 

 mountain solitudes, far from the haunts of man, it is a tame, confiding 

 species, if not molested. It seems indifferent to our presence; if we 

 sit quietly on a rock beside the stream, even one of its favorite perching 

 places, and do not move a muscle, it may alight beside us, gaze at 

 us intently with its large, liquid eyes for a moment, and then flit away 

 to another rock and begin to sing; several observers have had such 



