AMERICAN DIPPERS

     American dippers are unique birds in North America because they are a one-of-a-kind, truly aquatic songbird that dives under water to get invertebrate food from the rocky bottoms of fast-flowing, mountain streams of good water.  These hardy, dark-brown, six-inch birds found an unoccupied niche and adapted to it the year around to get invertebrate food, with little competition for it.  Their feathers are more oily than those on other kinds of birds, to keep the cold water away from the dippers' skins.    

     These permanent resident dippers dive upstream under water and walk into the fast currents on the bottoms of stone-bottomed, running streams, where they vigorously flip stones over to seize invertebrates, including mayfly larvae and stone fly larvae, small crayfish and other little critters  that were hiding under them to avoid predators and the rushing water.  Dippers also catch and ingest tadpoles and small fish they find in slow parts of streams.

     Dippers are most visible when they stand on mid-stream boulders between dives for food underwater.  Then one can see their chunky bodies and stubby, upright tails that reminds one of wrens; but dippers are related to thrushes.  There, too, an observer can also see dippers bobbing their whole bodies up and down on their long legs.  I often wondered why dippers do that, but I think its a form of camouflage.  That dipping and bobbing looks like debris bouncing in stream currents, so a predator might suppose that the dipper is just another blob of debris.  

     Dippers fly low and swiftly, from mid-stream boulder to boulder, over rushing mountain streams on their nine-inch wingspans.  They do that to quickly find places loaded with invertebrate food.

     Both genders of each pair of American dippers sing loud, high-pitched whistles and trills the year around to stay in contact with each other and to announce that this is their hunting/nesting territory.  Their songs must be vigorous to be heard above the roar of rushing waters.

     American dippers nest in relative safety under rock ledges and boulders on the waters' edges, and under bridges over waterways.  Each female lays two to four, white eggs that she alone incubates.  Males help feed invertebrates to the young, however. 

     American dippers are unique and intriguing North American birds that live along swiftly-running, mountain streams.  They walk on the stony bottoms of those smaller waterways to find and catch a variety of invertebrates for themselves, and their young in their nurseries.  Most of us will never see dippers in their native habitats, but it's neat to know they evolved to take advantage of a certain underwater niche.  They and their activities can be seen on videos on computers.            

























































































































































in Alaska, western Canada, the United States, Mexico and Central America.   

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