- 5 species worldwide
- DR personal total: 4 species (80%), 2 photo'd
The Dippers are five closely related species that share a distinctive lifestyle. Of the American Dipper
(right and above), Hoffman (1927) wrote that it "is an astonishing
sight to see a bird ... dive headlong into a foaming mountain stream
and disappear under its waters. ... The dipper has adopted the water as
its element and lives its whole life over and in the pools and
waterfalls of brooks and rivers." This can be said of any dipper. This
adult has built a nest behind a waterfall, and flies through the
cascade with each delivery of food to the young.
Muir, the great American environmentalist of the 19th century who so
loved to hike in the Sierra Nevada, wrote that the Dipper, "among all
the mountain birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wandering"
(Muir 1878). Twenty years later he wrote again of the dipper: "Bird and
stream are inseparable, songful and wild, gentle and strong, the bird
ever in danger in the midst of the stream's mad whirlpools, yet
seemingly immortal. And so I might go on, writing words, words, words:
but to what purpose? Go see him and love him, and through him as
through a window look into nature's warm heart" (Muir 1898).
late David Gaines, a great American environmentalist of the 20th
century, used Muir's words as his afterward in the classic Birds of Yosemite and the East Slope (Gaines 1988). The dippers do stir human souls as they go about their ordinary lives.
entire life-cycle of all the dippers is tied to their specialized
habitat. Nest are often built behind waterfalls, or under bridges.
Recently fledged young, like this fledgling American Dipper
(left), quickly take to their watery home, following parents around by
hopping from rock to rock, or chasing them on short, fast-moving wings.
There is just one dipper — American Dipper — in
North America, with a range stretching from Alaska, through the western
United States, and south in the mountains to Panama. Its colloquial
name throughout western North America is "Water Ouzel."
Eurasia has two dippers: White-throated Dipper from Britain across the Palearctic to China (left, a photo from China), and Brown Dipper along swift rivers in the Himalayas (below, nice photo © David Bishop).
the European bird, White-throated Dipper, Witherby (1943) wrote that it
"delights to perch on stone or rock protruding from water, bobbing and
curtseying in characteristic fashion as if hinged on legs, with
accompanying downward jerk of tail and blinking of white eye-lid."
Again, this can be said of any dipper.
to be mated for long periods, even year after year in some locales. A
dipper's song is a loud, musical, bubbling and wren-like affair. Some
species, like White-throated Dipper, may sing throughout much of the
year, including to establish winter territories. In some populations of
dippers, though, males may be polygynous, helping to rear the broods of
two, three, or even four females (Ormerod & Tyler 2005).
are extraordinary in being the only passerines adapted to exploit
aquatic habitats fully, by swimming and diving. ... Dippers have many
of the physiological adaptations for diving that are possessed by other
aquatic birds. For example, there is an immediate drop in the heart
rate as a bird plunges under water, and a further decline during the
period of submersion. As the dipper surfaces, the heart rate increases.
Dipper blood has a higher concentration of haemoglobin than that found
in comparable passerines, allowing for greater oxygen storage;" Ormerod
& Tyler (2005). Dippers pursue a large variety of underwater prey,
including small fish, dragonfly or caddis-fly larvae, and a rich
diversity of aquatic invertebrates.
have a white eye-lid that protects the eye, including in the pounding
waters of a cascade. This is apparent in this shot of the Sierra Nevada
bird near the nest (left; same individual as top of the page).
Yet, dippers have good eyesight underwater. This American Dipper
(below) in juvenal plumage (note narrow buffy edges to upperwing
coverts and tertial) is peering underwater. Dippers are generally
restricted to their mountain streams, but this particularly young bird
was a vagrant to a coastal park with a very small stream in Monterey,
California, during winter 2012-13.
South America also has two species. The White-capped Dipper (right, photo by William Hull) is a bird of Andean streams from Venezuela to Bolivia.
Rufous-throated Dipper Cinclus schulzi is very locally distributed in the eastern Andes of s. Bolivia and nw. Argentina.
Photos: The nesting American Dipper Cinclus mexicanus, shown in three photos amidst a waterfall, was in Sierra Co., California, 20 June 2014. The fledgling American Dipper was
on the Carmel River below San Clemente Dam, Monterey Co., California,
in May 1987, and the vagrant juvenal peering underwater was at Laguna
Grande Park, Seaside/Monterey, California, on 4 Jan 2013. The White-throated Dipper C. cinclus was at Huzu Bei Shan, Qinghai Province, China, in June 2004. David Biship photographed the Brown Dipper C. pallasii in Bhuton in 2013. William Hull photographed the White-capped Dipper C. leucocephalus at Lodge, Ecuador.
Photos © Don Roberson, except those attributed © David Bishop and © William Hull [Bill has a wonderful website with over 2200 world bird photos and sounds], and used with permission; all rights reserved.
Bibliographic note: There is family book in the Poyser series but I have not seen it: Tyler, S.J., & Ormerod, S.J. 1994. The Dippers. T. & A.D. Poyser, Calton, U.K. David Suddjian has kindly supplied this capsule review:
book "has a focus on the White-throated Dipper and Great Britain, which
was the focus of most of the authors' research, and from there it
compares to what is known from elsewhere in Europe, and of the other
dipper species elsewhere. 223 pp., some nice illustrations and photos.
Style and format reminded me of Derek Ratcliffe's books on Peregrine
Falcon and Common Raven, also in the Poyser series."
a book may indeed bring together important research, but the focus on a
single species with an "afterthought" to the other species in the
family probably does not qualify as a true "family book" in the
traditional sense. Fortunately, the authors of the Poyser book are also
the authors of the Handbook of the Birds of the World
chapter: Ormerod & Tyler (2005). Thus their prior research is now
incorporated in a true "family" text, and now gilded with some dazzling
Gaines, D. 1988. Bird of Yosemite and the East Slope. Artemisia Press, Lee Vining, CA.
Hoffman, R. 1927. Birds of the Pacific States. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
J. 1878. The humming-bird of California water-falls. Scribner's Monthly
15: 545-554, reprinted in Muir, J. 1984. The Mountains of California.
Muir, J. 1898. Among the birds of Yosemite. Atlantic Monthly 82: 751-760.
Ormerod, S.J., and S.J. Tyler. 2005. Family Cinclidae (Dippers), pp. 332 –355 in
Handbook of the Birds of the World (del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott & D.A.
Christie, eds). Vol. 10. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain.
Witherby, H.F. 1943. Handbook of British Birds. Vol. 2. H.F. & G. Witherby, Ltd., London.