It was a hellish wet and windy day here in Cornwall yesterday so I offered to drive my wife to Falmouth Uni to complete some textile printing that was important to meet a hand-in date this week,
I decided to while the time away with a visit to nearby Kennel Vale to check for any Dipper sightings knowing that the valley would be semi protected from the southerly wind direction.
I was on to a Dipper within thirty minutes and as I snapped away at the female bird in the image below it suddenly went into a distinct display mode gracefully raising its head and fluttering its wings
This display seemed to have the right effect as on at stage right came a previously unseen male Dipper
The male approached the female within a few inches and proceeded to dip and twist and bat its third white eyelid all from a static position
The female seemed quite impressed by the males display while retaining a head high stance throughout so the meeting didn't progress towards mating at this late time of the year but it will be one to lookout for in January and February next year.
After a couple of minutes the male began to loose interest in displaying and exited stage left but he remained in the same section of the river to provide me with some nice feeding shots in the Part 2 of this blog.
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