10 
RURAL HOURS. 
early for loons, however, and we may have been deceived. They 
usually appear about the first of April, remaining with us through 
the summer and autumn, until late in December, when they go to 
the sea-shore ; many winter about Long Island, many more in the 
Chesapeake. ISFot long since we saw one of these birds of un- 
usual size, weighing nineteen pounds ; it had been caught in Seneca 
Lake on the hook of what fishermen call a set-line, dropped to the 
depth of ninety-five feet, the bird having dived that distance to 
reach the bait. Several others have been caught in the same man- 
ner in Seneca Lake upon lines sunk from eighty to one hundred feet. 
It may be doubted if any other feathered thing goes so far beneath 
the water. There is however another, and a much smaller bird, 
the Dipper, or ousel, which is still more at home in the water 
than the loon, and that without being web-footed, but it is prob- 
ably less of a diver. The Dipper must indeed be a very singu- 
lar bird ; instead of swimming on the surface of the water like 
ducks and geese, or beneath like the loons, or wading along the 
shores like many of the long-legged coast tribes, it actually runs 
or flies about at ^ill over gravelly beds of mountain streams. Mr. 
Charles Buonaparte mentions having frequently watched them 
among the brooks of the Alps and Apennines, where they are 
found singly, or in pairs, haunting torrents and cataracts with 
perfect impunity, or running hither and thither along the stony 
bottom of more quiet streams. They cannot swim, however ; and 
they drop suddenly into the water from above, or at times they 
walk leisurely in from the bank, flying as it were beneath the sur- 
face, moving with distended wings. Their nests are said to be 
usually built on some point projecting over a mountain stream, 
either in a tree, or upon a rock ; and the young, when alarmed, 
DSI 
