Dippers are incredible birds, and the more you study them the more apparent this becomes. I will only be able to report about the bird I am currently concentrating on, but that's the way it should be, rather than recycling old information from another source, unchecked and therefore possibly ( and quite often), inaccurate.  Our bird has a territory of a couple of hundred yards,  on a fast flowing, clean river that is quite shallow in places and tumbles over numerous boulders and waterfalls with pools and glides. The bottom is gravel rather than silty mud. I have seen this bird in the same area on 4 consecutive days. He, or maybe she is always in the exact same area and uses the same boulders and rocks to settle, obviously he knows the area well and has favourite perching places. Watching him feed is an amazing sight. In the shallows he literally walks  along the bottom of the stream, almost always with his head pointing in to the flow. This is interesting and fun to watch but yesterday his feeding behaviour, and my appreciation of it, took on a whole new level. Flying to exposed boulders in the fastest part of the flow, where the strength of the water was at it's strongest, he literally submerged himself for seconds at a time and allowed the water to totally cover him. What amazed me was the way he remained static in the same position and was not washed down stream with the very fast flowing current. This behaviour went on for several minutes as he searched his prey. He would then flit to the next likely looking spot and repeat the behaviour. 

His plumage is obviously very well cared for because each time he emerged totally dry as the water tumbled off his back. His plumage is interesting. He has a bright, clear and clean white breast which extends to the belly, here there is a band of rich chestnut brown changing to a dark, almost black under the tail.  The rest of the plumage is a very dark chocolate brown, and dependant on the light, almost black apart from a lighter browner hue on the head. Each feather on the back is delicately fringed with a lighter colour which is more pronounced on the edge of the wing coverts forming a very narrow wing bar. 

If you look at the pictures posted yesterday you will get a much better idea of this bird's behaviour.