At Home with Wild Nature 



kind on a - mossy- s^tofifc itt-the middle of the rushing 

 brooklet. ; Wh6h;s}l6-^aw ifce'she sped away up-stream, 

 and I began ' a pairistaTdng ' but entirely unavailing 

 search for a nest or what I rather more expected to 

 find the scattered members of a newly-fledged family 

 sitting about singly waiting for the next mouthful of 

 aquatic insects brought along by one or other of their 

 parents. Presently my eye caught a white dropping 

 spinning round and round in its gelatinous envelope at 

 a point where the current formed a little eddy. This 

 gave me a clue, and I discovered another and another 

 until I arrived at a little overhanging bank formed by 

 some spate having chiselled a few barrowfuls of virgin 

 earth out of the bank, then I discovered something a 

 wee shade different in colouring and texture from its 

 surroundings. It was the dipper's nest, the roof of 

 which overhung the entrance hole in such a way as 

 entirely to hide it. It contained a family of lusty 

 chicks. 



As an illustration of the extreme care with which it 

 was hidden I may mention that a shepherd a man 

 whom I had known as an excellent bird's-nest finder 

 when a boy came and stood beside me whilst I was 

 clearing a space in the rough beck bottom for my 

 apparatus, and asked : " What er ye gahn to photo- 

 graph, Rechard ? " " A dipper's nest, Kit," I replied. 

 " But whaar ist? " he queried, although he was within 

 a few feet of it and looking straight at the bank in which 

 it was built. 



A dipper's nest, by the way, is a sort of glorified 



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