To Mountain Tarn 



is drained in the mountain ousel to a silver 

 crescent. 



The songs differ, very much as the haunts 

 do. The song of the dipper is low, rippling, 

 lively. The stream is lively, and sings a low 

 rippling song. On a slope like this, where the 

 stream is noisy, one cannot help thinking that 

 the dipper pitches his song a little higher. He 

 likes to be heard, and is heard, which he would 

 not be, if he sang as he does to the gentler ripple 

 of a lowland burn. There are dippers of the tail 

 stream. 



Moor and mountain slope have ever a tinge of 

 melancholy, borrowed it may be from their waste 

 vastness. Moorland birds are affected by this, or 

 express it. Their pipe or whistle has the moor- 

 land melancholy, which they tend to deepen. It 

 may be that the two react, and sounds impress 

 us as melancholy because heard on the moor. 

 The song of the ring ousel is pleasing, with just 

 this tinge. If may be that if heard elsewhere it 

 would be only pleasing. But one likes to hear it 

 at home. It has the restless habit of the dipper. 

 Many moorland birds are restless when disturbed. 

 Witness the wheatear. 



Near the waterside the dipper's domed nest is 

 placed, by preference in a vertical hole of a size 

 which it may just fill up. The ring ousel builds 

 in the dry stone heap, or under the perched 

 boulder. The nest in my mind's eye is among 



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