It’s early morning by the river and the frost is melting from the grass as the sun warms the back of my trousers. Cold doesn’t linger much at this time of year. The water is a deep black blue, though the sky is still pale. On the bend below the twisted Scots pine, its branches layered as in a Japanese garden, are a pair of dippers. His white chest flashes as he bobs up and down, stubby tail jerking with synchronicity.
I’ve been watching this pair for a few days now. Both sexes are almost identical, though the male dipper is slightly larger, but it’s their behaviour that makes it obvious who’s who. She’s standing on a rock, preening in a disinterested sort of way as if filing her nails, while he does an energetic dance, strands of nest material dangling from his beak.
Up and down the river, white splashes on boulders trace the dippers’ passage. The male flies to a rock in the middle of the river, where the current is fast, and slips smoothly into the flow. He pops back up, putting on a show, wings held away from his body, chirping loudly.
She must have been impressed, because she responds by flying under the bank, where a nest site is hidden from view. It’s below a cascade of red-brown roots of pine, torn and exposed by flood, and a flowering gorse bush that teeters on the brink. This is where the river sweeps round in an accelerated bend, and is a dangerous place to nest just a metre above water level. A summer spate and the next deluge could take it all away.
A dipper’s nest is a circular dome made from moss, lined in grass stems and leaves. He tugs at fine strands of root and carries them up and under the overhang. Both sexes nest-build and she will lay four to six eggs. There’s something special about knowing about this hidden spot, a secret I’m let into. I’ll keep an eye on the pair on my walks and hope they don’t get flooded out. Raising life on this riverbank is a precarious business.
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