Dipper, Taking a Dip!

We had been watching the Dipper busy diving and feeding for well over an hour at Kennell Vale yesterday when it took some time out for a lot of preening and bathing,  I could understand the preening but why bathing when it had just spent half of the last hour underwater anyway ?

 It was very serious about its cleaning and made an impressive amounts of splashing for quite a small bird as it repeated this exercise around twenty times before moving to a larger rock for some more preening and ear scratching at a leisurely pace,

It then moved off around the waterfalls picking off small insects at the waters edge to finish its day but without resorting to any more diving activities after its clean up,

We were hoping to record more interaction and perhaps even mating by these birds which have a well recorded nest site in the vicinity, But,  No one could have been disappointed with the behaviour display that this active little Dipper produced yesterday !!   But perhaps another day !