Birds of River, Forest and Sky 
3 
alders, above, a high dark spruce wall with glimpses of mountain tops 
beyond, and up the river, the rushing, roaring, glacial river, patches 
of white rapids enclosed by converging lines of green, swiftly running 
water. 
A metallic chatter below us made me look down just in time to 
see a second bird come flying in and alight in strong sunshine where, 
in wren-like pose, with head raised and short tail up at an angle, it 
stood out clear and dark. Water-wrens, the people of the camp above 
well called them. As we looked, the new arrival disappeared along the 
bank below us. 
Meanwhile its mate, if as was doubtless the case they were a pair, 
having at last digested its grampus dinner, stretched and dipped and 
started out after another meal; this time hunting over the rocks along 
its strip of shaded shore. Back and forth it went over a short beat, 
hunting till it found a larva, when, flying or swimming back with it in 
its bill to a certain small stone that it seemed to have selected as dining¬ 
room, it would stand and shake and shake till, as I could see through 
my field glass, the yellowish brown larva came out of its stony case. 
Once, as the ouzel, in shaking, threw up its wing to keep from slipping, 
I caught a flash of white under wing coverts. 
While we were watching the bird, a little girl from the camp above 
came down the bank for a pail of water, and when I urged her to be 
quiet exclaimed that the water-wrens paid no attention—“even when 
we ’re hollering” up at camp. Under the bank below us the child 
caught sight of the second dipper, which was hunting as the first one 
had by the bar, going down under the water in search of grampus. But 
as we watched it flew across, low over the white crests of the green waves, 
to hunt in the shade of the opposite bank, where its mate, if it were he, 
was getting his supper. 
At one time both birds stood on the same branch, the newcomer 
on the low swaying tip where the water was dashing up. Its mate had 
found so many larvae that its crop fairly bulged and it had to rest be¬ 
tween feasts. The newcomer worked up along the bank, getting me 
excited over a dark object that for a few moments I fondly imagined 
was a mossy nest. 
But although I had to leave for another year that most interesting 
of discoveries, I had seen one of the choice hunting grounds of the water 
ouzel in the heart of the Cascades. And right royal water sprites they 
seemed, to have chosen this wonderful mountain river for their home. 
For it was a rushing, roaring river with its “wild white horses” hurrying 
to the sea, the great brown boulders in its bed that tried to stay their 
course making them stamp the green depths of the swirling current 
