104 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



Last autumn I found that the Dippers on Ulleswater and up 

 in Martindale were singing lustily in the last days of October. 

 The Duckworths have overheard the Dipper singing in all the 

 summer months. In May 1891 I listened to a Dipper singing 

 on the Saark ; but its notes are most often uttered in frosty 

 weather. The Dippers enjoyed a good time in the sharp frost 

 of January 1891, when other birds were shivering and weak 

 for want of food. On the 7th of that month a friend and I 

 crossed the meadows between Edenhall and Langwathby, forced 

 our way through the alder grove, where Redpolls nest in the 

 summer-time, flushed a ' cock ' as we tore our way through the 

 hawthorn hedge, startled the gaily dressed Mallards from a hole 

 still open in the frozen 'runner/ left behind us the scrubby 

 bushes in which Blue Tits, Coal and Great Tits, were hunting 

 eagerly ; so reaching the open banks of the Eden, to at once 

 espy the hardy Dipper squatting on a great hummock of ice, 

 whence he was pouring forth a strong, shrill burden of song, as 

 though in defiance of the c Ice King.' Undisconcerted by our 

 near approach, he sang on and on, his shadow reflected in the 

 water, at the brink of which he perched, all absorbed in his own 

 delicious melody. At last he paused, rose, and flew a few yards, 

 alighted upon the chilling waters, so floated along in the 

 stream's current, until a rock that took his fancy coming into 

 view, he flitted across the stream for a moment, poised himself 

 gracefully on the boulder, and then disappeared in the recesses 

 of a favourite pool. Nor is the gaiety of the Dipper subdued 

 by damp and foggy days. On a recent Christmas Eve (1890), 

 I walked up the Eden banks in a thin and raw fog : a sudden 

 thaw had set in. When the haunts of the Dipper were gained 

 a thick and lowering mist invested the landscape, but the joy 

 of the Ouzels seemed unabated : curtseying sedately on the 

 rocks, they pursued their usual avocations with zest and spirit. 

 One individual hopped after a quaint fashion about a sandbank. 

 Another in merry sport chevied its mate along the stream. 

 Whether the loosened ice floats down the river, ever increasing 

 as it journeys on, or the flowering of the pilewort in the hedge- 

 side afford an omen that the present is the time to love, the 

 Dipper is ever a perfect embodiment of grace combined with 



