The breeding Dippers filmed this morning, best viewed in this small viewr, I am constantly disappointed with the quality of video on my blog so sorry.

This was filmed this morning, it shows the female hard at work weaving moss in to the nest. The male joins her with a beak full of material but leaves without using it.  I have already seen this a few times where one bird is unable to add to the construction because the other one hasn't finished yet.

 

It was wet and very dreary this morning so I delayed my visit until just after 10, I didn't think this  would be too much of a problem though as yesterday I had not seen the birds at the nest until after 1030.  When I got to the river I attempted to get in to the hide without any disturbance . This almost worked but from the hide I immediately saw a Dipper slide out of the nest and quietly slip away downstream.  It had probably seen me but I can't be sure.  It was 20 minutes before either bird returned which makes me think that was the case. Both birds arrived together, first they flew to the rocks in the water below the nest and then one, probably the female flew up to the nest.  They were noisy enough to herald their arrival and I heard them coming even before they had landed.  After a very short while, twenty seconds or so, the male joined her in the nest and I heard the new greeting sound that I had heard yesterday for the first time. Strange that you can see a bird hundreds of times and then hear something totally new. I will make an attempt to record this sound which is very interesting.

At first both birds went to and fro from the nest in turn but after a while it seemed that the male missed his turn,  he visited less and less until he stoped buidling and started to feed. The male had collected sphagnum moss from the high dry bank sides, he would  then flew to the rocks near to me and make  more than a casual effort to wet the moss befor flying back to the nest. At one point, instead of flying over to the nest side  he entered the water with a full beak of wet moss and swam back instead. The nest is already taking shape and looks mor circular than yesterday. With the male upstream feeding and the female away from the nest gathering, I left as quickly as I could without any disturbance.