A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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dipper
The dipper is a stocky gray songbird of fast cold streams that feeds by walking into the current and disappearing. It works along the bottom against the flow, gripping the stones, and takes larvae and small fish from underneath rocks. It has a movable flap over each nostril, a third eyelid for seeing underwater, dense plumage, and an outsized preen gland. It bobs constantly while standing, which is what the name records.
Etymology
The English name is for the bobbing rather than the diving, and the older name is water ouzel, ouzel being an old English word for a blackbird. Both names were in use for centuries before anyone described the underwater feeding, which is unusual, since most bird names in English record the most striking thing about the bird. What people noticed first was a small gray bird curtseying on a rock.
Notes
John Muir wrote an essay on the American dipper in The Mountains of California and called it the mountain streams’ own darling, describing it singing through the winter when everything else had gone quiet. The nest is a domed ball of moss built on a ledge behind or beside falling water, so the birds fly through spray to reach it. A stream with dippers on it is generally a clean one, since the insects they eat need clear cold water.