832 THE WATER OUZEL. 



unpleasant, especially when heard in the open atr, in the 

 middle of winter. 



ADDITIONAL. The Water Ouzel, Water Crow, Water Peifc, 

 Black Water Bird, Ducker, and Dipper, are the various names 

 by which this bird is known in Britain, where it is pretty gene- 

 rally distributed, being . most plentiful in the north. " It fre- 

 quents," says MACGILLIVRAY, " running waters, perches on stones 

 or on the banks, descends to the bottom in search of its food, 

 which consists of mollusca and insects, has a rapid direct flight, 

 and is of a rather solitary disposition. The nest, which is placed 

 near the water, is of enormous size, arched over, but broader than 

 high, with the aperture in front, and composed externally of 

 moss, internally of grass, and lined with beech or oak leaves. 

 The eggs, five or six, oval, rather pointed, pure white, about an 

 inch in length, nine-twelfths in breadth. The young, when 

 nearly fledged, on being disturbed, leave the nest and plunge 

 into the water." 



Some controversy has arisen among naturalists on the power 

 which this bird has been said to possess of walking underneath 

 the water. According to BUFFON, M. HERBERT was the first to 

 observe and record this extraordinary feat. WATERTON ridi- 

 cules the notion ; and BRODERIP, who seems to have weighed the 

 evidence on both sides, agrees with MACGILLIVRAY in believing 

 only that its power of submersion extends to the short interval 

 of time necessary to the seizure of its food, and that with diffi- 

 culty it remains under water sufficiently long for this. The 

 sonorous song of this extraordinary bird startles the ear as it 

 comes mingled with the hoarse tones of the torrent, or the rushing 

 of the wintry waterfall, sometimes in the midst of a snow-storm. 

 MR. RENNIE, who remarks that it is one of the few birds that 

 are vocal so early in the year as the months of January and 

 February, heard it on the llth of the latter month in hard 

 frost, when the thermometer in the morning had been at 26, sing 

 incessantly in a powerful and elegant style, with much variation 

 in the notes, many of which were peculiar to itself, intermingled 

 with a little of the piping of the Woodlark. The same author 

 declares that the Dipper consumes a considerable quantity of 

 fishes' spawn, and especially of the ova of the salmon. BECH- 

 STEIN alleges that this bird sings in the night. YARRELL, in his 

 British Birds, gives an admirable cut of the domed nest, which 

 in shape much resembles that of the Wren, than which, how- 

 ever, it is morfe broad and shallow. 



