Here is one of our neighborhood Dippers, cleaning those precious wings, probably stimulating a little extra waterproofing oil from the glands, generally keeping the feathers smooth and in proper order. 

BIRDS OF OREGON  by Marshall, Hunter, et al. puts it succinctly: “Few birds are as astonishing as the American Dipper.”  They are found in many clean mountain streams and rivers in Oregon, even occasionally reaching the seashore where they will tolerate feeding in brackish water.  Some high mountain Dippers move downstream in winter.  Strictly predators they eat small invertebrates and vertebrates they find on stream bottoms.

So they are extraordinarily waterproof.  They can grasp rocks in rushing water with extra long toes.  Their blood is especially high in hemoglobin for carrying extra oxygen so Dippers can stay underwater longer than your average songbird, like a warbler or wren.

Though it is named Cinclus mexicanus, this species ranges from Alaska down to Panama.  It’s not found east of the Rockie Mountains in the U.S.  In all that area I’ve not heard of any other town that has Dippers nesting next to the town square.  Are Ashland’s Dippers are the most urbanized of their kind? Know of a larger city with Dippers in the city park?  David Sibley suggests they do well in mountainside towns where streams are clean.  Manmade bridges provide excellent nesting sites.  These guys are to bridges what the swifts are to chimneys, what Barn Swallows are to porches.  I must add that I’ve found Tree Swallows nesting between the stones of a chimney at the Ashland Community Center.

According to BNA the American Dipper is one of five species in the world.  Two are in South America and two in Eurasia.  Ours is the only one entirely slate gray.  The Eurasian Dipper I first saw in Scotland has a white bib.  Showiest of the dippers: White-capped, which is found in the Andes from Venezuela and Colombia to Peru.  All five dipper species have similar feeding and nesting habits.  All are short-tailed rotundities.  Pert, preening profundities.  And great singers.  Their voice reminds you of a Winter Wren, their DNA reminds taxonomists of the thrush family.  Their singing is somewhere in between.  And once again I must link to John Muir’s touchingly brilliant paen to his favorite bird, encountered in the near frozen streams of Yosemite in winter.

The Dipper may nest once or twice per season, raising four or five young each time.  There is very little information about American Dipper populations.  Breeding bird surveys and the Christmas Count rarely touch stream habitat in adequate fashion.  It’s known that stream acidity or turbidity can lower breeding success.  Pollution can kill off prey and drive the Dippers away. For example there used to be Dippers living in streams that drain into California’s Silicon Valley. 

The Rufous-throated Dipper in Latin America is endangered.  Otherwise this doughty Cinclus family is pretty much on its own out there in the mountains of the world.  Dipping, living, breeding, feeding and dying.  Once in awhile we lumbering bipeds get to watch a bit of their daily routine:

 

 

Milder winters in Norway seem to be helping the Dipper population there. 

References:

 AUDUBON SOCIETY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS.  John Terres. Knopf. NY.  1980.

Birds of North America. Online.  The American Dipper.

BIRDS OF OREGON.  David Marshall, et al. (ed).  Oregon State University, Corvallis, 2006.

THE DIPPERS by Stephanie Tyler and Stephen Ormerod.  Poyser. London. 1994.  An entire 225-page book dedicated to Dippers.

SIBLEY GUIDE TO BIRD LIFE & BIRD BEHAVIOR.  David Alen Sibley.  Knopf. NY. 2001.