Tough cases, Dippers
I have often wondered, when watching our stream when it is in spate and becomes opaque and fast flowing, how the White-fronted Dippers ( Cingle plongeur ) manage to find enough food to eat. I assume that the Kingfishers ( Martin-pêcheur ) go down to the main river where the waters might be calmer, and they are also capable of local migration to the coast to find better weather, but it is known that many will not survive in very cold weather. But the dippers seem to stay, I see them nearly every day. The dippers' diet are aquatic insects; larvae of caddis flies, beetles, mosquitoes, dragon fly, small crustaceans , fish eggs and even very small fish. Difficult to find in fast, muddy waters. No wonder they have to spend two thirds of the day looking for food! So I was fascinated the other day to watch a dipper searching right at the edge of the swirling surface and managing to find the tubes of a caddisfly larvae, bringing them up onto the rocks and th...