58 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
mountain Ptarmigan in an osier bed. It has also 
proved a regular puzzle to classify ; in some 
respects it shows a resemblance to the Thrush tribe, 
while in its shape and attitudes, as well as in the 
build of its nest, it is amazingly like a gigantic 
Wren, with the habits of a Newfoundland dog. 
But science has in later years decided that it has no 
close connection either with the Wren or the 
Thrush tribe, and has given it a separate family 
position of its own among British birds. Rather 
smaller than a Thrush in size, with upper parts 
of dusky grey and brown, pure white breast, and 
less conspicuous chestnut and black on the belly, it 
is a bird that cannot be missed upon the moorland 
streams, as it perches, in its cock-tailed. Wren-like 
way, on the spray-dashed boulders, or whizzes past 
with direct. Kingfisher-like flight to another post of 
vantage beside the water. It is also extremely 
active under water, using both legs and wings to 
help itself along in pursuit of its food, which 
consists of various forms of water-insects and small 
molluscs. It has a bad reputation as a devourer of 
trout and salmon spawn, but it is very doubtful 
whether this is well-deserved, on the whole, or not, 
for a part of its diet consists of the very creatures 
by which the spawn is destroyed. Very early in 
the season, often about the beginning of March, it 
makes a large round nest of moss, as big or bigger 
