A White-throated Dipper at Capel's Mill, Stroud

I had to do some work today having taken some time off towards the end of the week. So after finishing my report this afternoon, I went to see Helena who was reading in the garden and decided to go looking for a blip down at the river Frome at Capel's Mill. I had checked earlier and noticed that sunshine was forecast for the end of the day and so it turned out. We had some tea and Helena told me of her culinary plans, having been out shopping for the ingredients for an Easter Simnel Cake adapted for a wheat free diet. She had also spotted some good value sardines which sorted out tonight's supper.

So I left Helena to her baking and went on my quest for a Kingfisher blip. It has become rather a joke as each time I deliberately go looking for one, I don't find it. I think this is the nature of such quests, particularly with the myths surrounding kingfishers and the Arthurian legend. Nevertheless I was looking forward to whatever happened.

What actually turned up was the immediate discovery of a White-throated Dipper which was feeding on the shoreline of the river. At this point there is a small footbridge which links the two sides of the river and allows access from Fromebanks on the Stroud side to Rodborough fields on the south side. Fromebanks is a noted wildlife conservation area and will soon be managed once again by the Gloucester Wildlife Trust after a period of slight neglect. Since the recent canal regeneration under the railway viaduct at Capel's Mill, there has been a lot more attention paid to this delightful zone, which is only a few hundred yards from the centre of Stroud.

I have seen a dipper here before, and blipped it. But today I was determined to be ready for the flight of a kingfisher, which if it came it was likely to appear out of the blue. So I chose to use Auto ISO with a high shutter speed and to sacrifice some quality just to be able to at least capture the flight of a bird sharply. The river is overhung by tall trees where I was standing for a while looking at the location where I've seen kingfishers before, close to where I think they nest. But there was no sign of them, and as soon as I saw the dipper I decided to concentrate on watching it as I knew it had previously nested close by the footbridge.

I found a place to sit in reasonable comfort, where I could watch the footbridge and the noisy flow of the river under it as its fall over the remnants of the old stones of the ruined Capel's Mill. Within a couple of minutes I realised that there were two dippers and that they were busy searching for food, and were flying up to the underside of the bridge where their nest was. I adjusted my settings and just sat watching them too-ing and fro-ing between the river and their young every few minutes. Occasionally they flew over the old mill race and went downstream for a few minutes but always came back. Then I realised that there were two pairs and two nests under the bridge which accounted for the frequent activity I had been watching.

A yellow wagtail came close them several times and made slightly threatening movements which showed that they were competing for the space and probably the food, although the dippers seemed to be finding plenty of it. I love the way they wade through the water, occasionally dropping beneath the surface and walking along the bottom before coming out to shake the water off their feathers. They were quite happy for me to be watching them and often seemed to look straight at me. But I imagine that having their nests directly beneath the walkway of the bridge means that few predators can reach them, so they feel very safe. They hardly ever seem to leave the water side at all, usually perching on stones or rocks or stranded branches stuck in the river.

My pictures weren't as good as I had hoped, because of the noise from the high ISO, up to 12800 sometimes. But it was useful to test out what results I could get in the dull conditions. A tripod would be useful too. I have posted a dozen of the pictures to my Flickr gallery here. I added a picture of the railway viaduct and the new stretch of canal, which were located about twenty yards from where I took the bird pictures by the footbridge over the river.