162 MOUNTAIN AND MOORLAND 



of stream to be their own preserve. There are scores 

 of interesting things about these birds, but the most 

 interesting is just this, that they are perching birds 

 which have tackled the problem of aquatic life and 

 have solved it. 



The Water Ouzel is fine in itself, and we often hear 

 it in days when there are few songs. Mr. Robert 

 Gray writes in his " Birds of the West of Scot- 

 land " : " In early spring, the male birds may be seen 

 perched on some moss-covered stone, trilling their 

 fine clear notes"; and again: "I have stood within a 

 few yards of one at the close of a blustering winter's 

 day, and enjoyed its charming music unobserved. The 

 performer was sitting on a stake jutting from a mill- 

 pond in the midst of a cold and cheerless Forfarshire 

 moor, yet he joyously warbled his evening hymn with 

 a fulness that made me forget the surrounding 

 sterility." Ruskin quotes these sentences in " Love's 

 Meinie," and has a good deal to say about the bird, 

 making, however, the astonishing statement : " I am 

 sixty-two, and have passed as much time out of those 

 years by torrent sides as most people. Yet I have 

 never seen a Water Ouzel alive " (" Love's Meinie," 

 p. 99; see also p. 194). Yet the bird is found in Britain, 

 Mr. Howard Saunders tells us, " wherever there are 

 rapidly running rivers, or brooks rippling over rocks 

 and stones." 



It is a good rule on natural history excursions to 

 turn stones upside down and then put them gently 

 right again. For it is under loosely lying flat stones 

 that many creatures lurk, and this is particularly true 

 of the stream. When we lift up some suitable stones 

 from the stretch that the Dipper frequents we find a 



