Cool Critters: A trout with feathers – the American Dipper
The American dipper, a drab-looking bird no larger than a robin, is a splashy rarity: a songbird that swims and even walks underwater. This round-bodied gray bird with short wings and a stubby tail is North America’s only aquatic songbird.
The American dipper may be unassuming, but so was Clark Kent. Once it pursues food, it becomes a superbird.
This time of year, you can spot them moving like wind-up toys among fast-moving streams and rivers in the Inland Northwest. Perched on boulders and fallen logs, they dip in and out of the water rat-a-tat-tat-style while searching for submerged aquatic insects, worms, snails and fish eggs.
The birds’ rapid bobbing and slate-gray coloring makes them challenging to track and photograph, said Spokane resident Carol Schulz Ellis, who recently photographed an American dipper on the Spokane River near Inspiration Point.
“The bird continually dove into the water and then shortly after would pop back up several feet away. It would also sit on several of the rocks in the area to rest briefly, and then dive back in,” Ellis said. What’s more, the river’s high, rushing water kept obscuring her view of the rocks and the small bird flitting among them, she added.
Although the lively bobbing scene is the one you’re most likely to witness, remarkably, it’s not the dipper’s main show.
That’s because the bird plunges beneath the water for up to 15 seconds at a time, using its strong wings as paddles to swim or walk along the river floor to catch its prey.
“These birds are able to forage on the bottom in which the water current is too fast and too deep for people to stand,” according to “The Birders Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds.”
How does a bird that weighs as little as a golf ball do it? Truly, the American dipper is built to dip in cold water.
Hard-earned over thousands of years of evolution, the bird’s superpowers include: extra layers of feathers covered with a thick coating of oil wax for waterproofing; a low metabolism to help retain body heat; blood that stores a high amount of oxygen; short, muscular wings to propel them through water; nostril flaps that close underwater and a third eyelid that acts like a pair of goggles.
Although American dippers live year-round in the western United States and parts of Canada and Alaska, now is the best time to see them in our region. Why? Rather than migrate south for winter, they move downstream to lower elevations where waterways are less icy. Come spring, many will return upstream to build nests high along cliff ledges, steep riverbanks and behind waterfalls – all to protect eggs and hatchlings from rising waters, according to the National Wildlife Federation.
Despite all of its dipping, swimming and foraging in cold, fast-moving waters, the American dipper still finds time to sing. In fact, you might hear its birdsong before you’re able to see the bird itself – a series of high, melodious whistles, loud enough to rise above the sound of rushing water. All the while, the bird’s face is tilted to the chill of winter.