146 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS 



readers must have noticed, in such places, a 

 bird much like a blackbird, but with a short 

 tail and white breast, perched alone on a rock ; 

 and the strange thing is that the dipper 

 really is, like the blackbird, a singing-bird of 

 the thrush kind, and no one, looking at it, 

 would have the least idea that it was anything 

 of a water-bird, much less a diver. Its feet 

 are just like a thrush's, and yet it swims like 

 a duck ; but it is not often seen swimming, 

 for it generally goes straight under water and 

 flies there, sometimes helping itself along the 

 bottom with its feet ; its food consists of 

 the different sorts of water-insects and shell- 

 fish that are to be found in streams. Young 

 dippers are reared in a nest like other young 

 thrushes ; but if they are put into the water 

 before they are fledged they know how to 

 dive, and use their half -folded wings as 

 paddles at once. So here we have a bird of a 

 land family which is quite at home in the 

 water, and in such water as the real water- 

 birds do not care about, for you find hardly 

 any of these in the mountain streams the 

 dippers love. Winter and summer the brave 

 little water-ouzel sticks to his stream, diving 



