PALLAS DIPPER 
95 
The female is similar to the male in colour, and the 
young' only more tinged with reddish. They moult 
hut once in the year. 
These wild and solitary birds are only met with singly 
or in pairs, in the neighbourhood of clear and swift- 
running mountain streams, whose bed is covered with 
pebbles, and strewed with stones and fragments of rock. 
They are remarkably shy and cautious, never alight on 
branches, but keep always on the border of the stream, 
perched, in an attitude peculiar to themselves, on some 
stone or rock projecting over the water, attentively 
watching for their prey. Thence they repeatedly plunge 
to the bottom, and remain long submerged, searching for 
fry, Crustacea, and the other small aquatic animals that 
constitute their food. They are also very destructive 
to musquitoes, and other dipterous insects, and their 
aquatic larvae, devouring them beneath the surface. 
They never avoid water, nor hesitate in the least to 
enter it, and even precipitate themseves without danger 
amidst the falls and eddies of cataracts. Their habits 
are, in fact, so decidedly aquatic, that water may be 
called their proper element, although systematically 
they belong to the true land birds. The web-footed 
tribes swim and dive ; the long legged birds wade as 
long as the water does not touch their feathers; the 
dippers alone possess the faculty of walking at ease on 
the bottom, as others do on dry land, crossing in this 
manner from one jh ore to the other under water. \ 
They may be often seen gradually advancing from the 
shallow s, penetrating deeper and deeper, and, careless 
of losing their depth, walking w ith great facility on the 
gravel against the current. As soon as the water is 
deep enough for them to plunge, their wings are 
opened, dropped, and agitated somew hat convulsively, 
and w ith the head stretched horizontally, as if dying, 
they descend to the bottom, where they course up and 
down in search of food. As long as the eye can follow 
them, they appear, while in the water, covered with 
bubbles of air, rapidly emanating from their bodies, as 
is observed in some coleopterous insects. 
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