COL. DUTHIE ON HOME OF THE DIPPER. 
I2I 
easily found unless one happens to see one of the birds in the act of 
leaving or returning home. The pure white eggs, generally five in 
number, are laid on a layer of grass or dead leaves. The Dippers are 
early breeders, incubation commencing in the month of March, when 
the bank is often white with frost and icicles hang round the nest. 
The eggs are hatched in about fifteen days, and both birds are then 
most assiduous in collecting food for their brood, flying hither and 
thither in their busy cheery way. The young birds begin their amphi¬ 
bious life at a very early stage of their existence, for, from the position 
of the nest, they often tumble into the water when using their wings 
for the first time, and have to struggle to land as best they can. 
The family haunt the neighbourhood of their home till the sum¬ 
mer days begin to shorten, they then become independent and scatter 
far and wide, and by the autumn they may be found on any part of 
their native stream, from its very source on the moorlands, in all its 
wanderings as a tiny rill under the overshadowing heather, where it 
leaps and falls from pool to pool on the mountain side, or ripples 
through the woodlands in the valley; on the broad reaches of the full 
river, and even as far as the brackish waters of the estuary, when the 
white Gulls swoop over the shining sands, and the smoke of ocean 
steamers is seen trailing in long lines over the dark blue horizon. 
Every angler is familiar with the dark, little white-chested bird— 
the Water Ouzel,-as he is often called, who keeps him company on 
many a day’s fishing. He sees him now bobbing and curtseying on 
a stone, now diving into the water in search of food, steadying himself 
with his wings, as he half flutters, half walks on the gravelly bed 
some feet below the surface. Sometimes, when crossing a pool, he 
suddenly stops in his flight and drops with a splash into the water, 
vanishing from sight; after a few minutes he reappears, floating like a 
cork down the current, and either sinks again or rises on rapid wing 
to disappear round the next bend of the river. 
The ordinary note of the Dipper is a sort of chirp, which he 
almost invariably utters when flying. He has besides this a real 
song, and a very sweet one it is, which may be heard during most 
months of the year; but in summer it is seldom noticed, being 
drowned in the chorus of other birds. He is heard at his best, and 
is all the more welcome, in the depths of winter, when, sitting 
on a piece of ice on the rim of the black water, he pours out his 
music to the bitter east wind, with the snowflakes falling thickly 
round him, when even the Redbreast is silent in the holly tree close 
by. 
The Dippers suffered a good deal of persecution at one time 
from keepers and others, under the impression that they fed upon 
the ova of salmon and trout. This fallacy has been dispelled, and 
