Dipper strikes a chord

Standing on the bridge of the Feagle River at Rossa Street in Clonakilty, I was intrigued to see small trout in the swim of the water, and to see a dipper fly upriver from under the bridge and alight on a rock in midstream.

After a bout of characteristic bobbing and dipping, it plunged into the current and disappeared. Dippers walk underwater. While they are not uncommon on mountain streams, it isn’t every town centre that can boast of this bird and offer the visitor a chance to observe it by simply leaning on a bridge close to the main street.

Dippers have the portly profile and short, perky tail of an oversize wren, but are very black, with a brilliant white breast. The black wings, in certain light, reveal a bottle-green sheen. Hardly had the dipper disappeared, when a grey wagtail, that very slim, very elegant member of the wagtail family, swooped upriver in its wake and perched daintily on the bank — where, of course, it began to wag its tail. Often called yellow wagtails (a separate species rarely seen in Ireland) because of their lemon-coloured breast, these birds are, indeed, more strikingly yellow than grey. From its perch, it rose every now and then almost vertically over the water to snatch a fly from the air.