White-throated Dipper

A walk along the middle reaches of the Water of Leith today, down through Dean Village.

I was practicing a bit more with the camera, in gloomy lighting, after getting withering looks from JimH last night for not always being fully manual.


Lots of things in the blipbank for another day, but for now I'm afraid it's another bird. In Britain and Ireland, these wee fat dippers (Cinclus cinclus gularis) have a more chestnut coloured head and belly.

The shot is probably cropped a bit too tight, getting a bit grainy, but it was my first decent photo of one of these. They sit on rocks in fast water and dive in to swim upstream, catching invertebrates. Not much bigger than a blackbird, they somehow don't look terribly aquatic.