COMMON DIPPER. 71 



junction with the sea. I have never traversed the banks of any 

 Scottish stream without meeting this bird, and I have seen it 

 repeatedly in rocky gullies worn in the mountain side, far up 

 beyond the line where one expects to find only birds of plunder. 

 In some of the glens on the Loch Lomond mountains, three or 

 four pairs constantly attract the rambler as he traverses their 

 romantic haunts, and their nests are found in sites ranging from 

 the level of the loch itself to the very summit of the chain, whence 

 another streamlet takes its source, and rolls down the other side 

 into the Firth of Clyde. In such districts the site usually chosen 

 is in a niche of rock near a waterfall, or under some rudely con- 

 structed bridge; but on the banks of larger streams I have found 

 it placed against the wasted trunks of willow trees, bending over 

 the water, and also in rugged landslips, where a convenient tuft of 

 rough herbage offers both a support and the means of better con- 

 cealment. In some cases the structure is very skilfully hid, so to 

 speak, by a total disregard of symmetry, the shapeless mass of 

 material being as unlike a nest as possible, and only recognisable 

 when the bird itself betrays the secret. In almost all the nests I 

 have examined, the eggs or young were six in number, the first 

 brood being generally fledged about the last week of April. I 

 found three nests of the Dipper in Shemore Glen, Loch Lomond, 

 last summer; they were all within sound of two or three leaps of 

 water hemmed in by overhanging rocks of a great height, almost 

 meeting at the top, and forming a noisy and gloomy recess such 

 as few birds would make choice of as a nursery. There, in their 

 spray-covered sanctuary, the various broods were reared in safety 

 and dispersed to give additional interest to these beautiful cas- 

 cades. There, too, in early spring, the male birds may be seen 

 perched on some moss-covered stone, trilling their fine, clear notes, 

 though in a measure lost in the noise of the broken water, tearing 

 and roaring over the rugged rocks. Dippers, indeed, everywhere 

 delight in deep linns and brawling rapids, where their interesting 

 motions never fail to attract the angler and bird student, whose 

 musings suffer not in such feathered company. 



In some parts of Scotland this favourite of both poets and 

 naturalists is cruelly shot by keepers and others ignorant of its 

 innocent life, as an enemy to those who practise the "gentle art" 

 on our Highland streams. Writing from the parish of Aberlour 

 in 1836, the Rev. Alex. Wilson takes notice of the Dipper as being 



