"[H]is music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the trills of the rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil ponds." —John Muir, 1894 (1:283).
North America’s only truly aquatic song bird, the American Dipper is fine avian company on a fast moving stream or river, doing as its name suggests, dipping it’s body in an up-and-down movement while perched on a river rock. Known as the Ouzel or Water Thrush, the bird not only dips, but dives into and swims underwater to find aquatic insects and larvae to eat. One of the few species that may overwinter in Alaska, the American Dipper is known to nest at Kugrak Springs and believed to overwinter there, and along other open rivers across Gates of the Arctic, where the water is warm enough to sustain flow through the winter months when most of the rivers are frozen.
American Dipper abundance in North America.
Fink, D., T. Auer, A. Johnston, M. Strimas-Mackey, O. Robinson, S. Ligocki, W. Hochachka, C. Wood, I. Davies, M. Iliff, L. Seitz. 2020. eBird Status and Trends, Data Version: 2019; Released: 2020. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.
Are "Not-So-Warm" Springs" a haven for the American Dipper?
D’Souza, JM, Windsor, FM, Santillo, D, Ormerod, SJ. Food web transfer of plastics to an apex riverine predator. Glob Change Biol. 2020; 26: 3846– 3857. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15139
Kingery, H. E. and M. F. Willson (2020). American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (P. G. Rodewald, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi-org.arlis.idm.oclc.org/10.2173/bow.amedip.01
Muir, J. (1894). The Mountains of California. The Century Company, New York, NY, USA.
