Diving Dipper

Bob Sharples and I returned to Kennell Vale pm yesterday hoping for a bright afternoon and a pair of Dipper,  On arrival we had both,  The pair of Dipper were present but both left before we had quietly assembled our cameras well back from the river bank,

We waited around an hour before one Dipper returned but by then the skies over the woods had turned cloudy so light levels were a bit of a challenge, Having said that the solo Dipper treated us to an hour or so of behaviour action displaying its diving skill in the river which was running faster and higher than on recent visits,

When the Dipper finished feeding it spent another thirty minutes preening and scratching its head in between regular high energy plunges into shallow water while sending up impressive sprays of water with its fast beating wings,

I do not remember the last time that I took over a thousand images of one bird but all of this action in the water demanded lots of continuous bursts of shutter action at eleven frames a second while trying to capture some of the detail and I ended up taking a total of 1104 which have taken until noon today to cull down to 1%  with eleven images used in the 'Dipper Diving'  shots posted below.

Due to the time required to cull down my preening and bathing and scenic shots, the balance of yesterdays shot will appear on this blog later today or tomorrow as ' Dipper taking a Dip'