The Li'l Dipper

The little creek was narrow, but deep, swift and rowdy. It plunged down the mountain frothing and roaring as it crashed into boulders and fallen logs and cascaded over a wall of mossy rocks. Along its banks sword fern, kinnikinic, salal, and huckleberry flourished, nurtured by the fine mist. A wide pool formed at the bottom of the falls, then narrowed and raced through a narrow gap. The stream continued down the mountain side, twisting, turning, and roaring, before it disappeared.

In the middle of the pool, on a water-swept rock, a pudgy black bird, flicking its stubby tail, dipped and bobbed as if curtsying to an audience. It emitted a joyous peep with each curtsy in perfect harmony with the roar of the waterfall, the melody of the stream, and the wind sighing through the trees.

Weeks before she had hustled back and forth with her mate, carrying bits of moss, fir needles, and twigs. They had weaved and knitted their bounty into the thick moss growing on the face of the rock wall and fashioned an ingenious and almost invisible, nest. The nest, sustained by the constant mist from the waterfall, became a living shelter, thick, soft and warm, and safe from predators.

  With her head held high, the bird surveyed her handiwork.  She winked an eye, tilted her beak high and let out a beautiful, inspired trill.  Then without warning the black bird dived into the water. Underwater she stretched her wings out as if she were soaring on the wind.  To an observer, she might have appeared to fly underwater, but in reality she walked along the bottom of the swift stream using her strong claws to anchor herself to rocks and her short, powerful wings as paddles. She turned over small underwater rocks, pecking like a barnyard chicken.

Suddenly she shot out of the water in a spray of droplets and flew to the mossy rock wall where she clung for a moment holding a fat periwinkle in her beak. A pair of baby birds, their mouths gaping, popped out of the moss. The little mother bird offered the periwinkle to her young, and then, twittering like a wren, flew to another rock and alighted inches above the raging current where she began dipping and peeping and flicking her pert little stub of a tail to the rhythm of the stream.

The cute little Water Ouzel cocked her head, swelled her breast, and like a serenading minstrel, burst into a sweet song with all the trills and flourishes and notes of an accomplished flutist.