THE DIPPER. 319 



character of its haunts, really an early bird. It sings in 

 January, and its note, which is very sweet and peculiarly 

 varied, may be heard before the frost has relented on the 

 banks between which the stream of its habitation runs. 



The nest is also begun early in the season, and consider- 

 able labour and ingenuity are bestowed upon it. It is large 

 for the size of the bird, formed of such materials as the 

 ravine or other banks of the stream furnish, covered over 

 with a sort of dome, and having an opening in the side. It 

 is usually placed but a little above the highest level of the 

 water, and the water is generally high from the spring rains 

 and floods about the time that it is building. The angle 

 between two fragments of stone, or between an old root and 

 the bank, is no uncommon place for it. Externally it is 

 generally of moss, which the humidity of the place keeps 

 partially green, so that it looks like one of the natural mossy 

 tufts; internally it is lined with more dry matters leaves 

 or fibres, as the situation may best afford. The first brood 

 is fledged in May ; but as the birds have a perennial pasture, 

 they have two or three in the course of the season. The 

 eggs are not more than five, and of a beautiful white. 

 [There are, no doubt, exceptions : but the eggs of many birds 

 partake of the colour which the breast of the male has in 

 the breeding season.] The young dippers grow fast, are 

 great feeders, and are incessantly chirping in the nest, in the 

 absence of the parent birds. It does not appear that the 

 dipper inhabits situations so high as that the running waters 

 are liable to be frozen over in ordinary seasons, though it 

 comes farther down in the winter, not to the wide and 

 slow rivers, however, for these are apt to be close, while the 

 brawling ones are clear. A pair of dippers with their nest 

 are given in the vignette to this volume. 



* The dipper, or water-ouzel, belongs to the family of thrushes, but is 

 an aberrant form. It is common along the trout streams of Derbyshire, 



