THR USHES— DIPPERS. 



Fig. 111.— White's 

 TnliVSHi^Ureociuclavaria). 



have the front 



The Dippers.- 



Family 



CindidcE. 



(Oreocicla varia), a species which comes from its home in Siberia to visit 

 Western Europe and the British Islands occasionally. 



All the thrushes are insectivorous bii-ds, but feed 

 also on worms and small molluscs, while in the 

 autumn and winter their food consists principally of 

 berries. Most of the northern species are migratory, 

 such as the fieldfare {Turdus pilaris), and the redwing 

 {T. iliaeus), which come to us from Scandinavia in the 

 winter, while even our song-thrush ('/'. miisicus) is to 

 a great extent a migrant. 



In the blackbirds (Merula), tlie sexes are different 

 in colour, the female being always of a duller plumage 

 than in the male, as is evidenced by our common 

 blackbird (M. merula). The ground-thrushes are dis- 

 tinguished by a patch of white under the wing. 

 Tiiere is scarcely any part of the world from which 

 thrushes are absent. 



The dippers, or water ouzels, are aquatic wrens. 

 They are generally associated with the thrushes, but they 

 of the tarsus without any scutellse, and only covered with a 

 plain tarsal envelope. Like the wrens, they have no rictal 

 bristles, and they build a round nest of moss under the 

 shelter of a stone or the root of a tree, and lay white eggs. 



The name of dipper is not attached to this bird because it dips under the 

 water, but on account of the curious bobbing motion which the bird con- 

 tinually keeps up. Every time that it bobs 

 its head, it flirts it^ wings and slightly erects 

 its tail. The bird is ranked as "vermin " by 

 ignorant people, who suppose that it devours 

 the ova of trout, but it is generally allowed 

 that the evidence of this crime on the part 

 of the bird is open to doubt, and its food 

 consists of caddis-worms, water-beetles, and 

 small molluscs. The flight of the dipper is 

 extremely rapid, and resembles that of a, 

 kingfisher. It flies with rapid beats of the 

 wings above the surface of the water, and 

 will disappear suddenly beneath the sti earn, 

 but more often it settles on a rf>ck and 

 deliberately walks into the water, searching for its food among the stones at 

 the bottom of the river. 



Of the dippers about a dozen species are known, inhabitants of the moun- 

 tain-streams of the northern parts of both hemispheres, extending to the 

 Himalayas and China ; while in the New World the genus is found in the 

 highlands of Central America, and throughout the Andes of Colombia 

 Ecuador, and Peru. 



The Troglodytidm embrace a number of small birds such as our common 

 wren {Anorthura tro(ilodytes), which are spread over the 

 greater part of the globe, ' being very abundant in the New The Wrens.— 

 World, but absent in the Australian and Ethiopian regions. Family 



They have no rictal bristles, and build domed nests. Many Trorjlodyiidce. 

 of them have a remarkable power of song. 



Fig. 112. -The Common Diiper 

 (Cindus aquaticiis). 



