When I reached the river bank it almost seemed as though the curlews were welcoming me. One bird glided down with stiff wings, uttering those long, melancholy, almost mournful and bubbling calls; the other seemed to reply with the usual distinctive "cour-lee" and I guessed they had chicks.
Away from the shallow stretches, the river seemed uncannily quiet as if waiting for something, perhaps the next run of salmon. I knew there were dippers here, but avoided the bridge where I knew their nest already contained young that were almost fledged. The nests are domed and in some ways look like a wren's overgrown nest. Dippers are among the earliest breeders in the Highlands, along with golden eagles, ravens and herons, and are a favourite water bird for me, perhaps because of their lifestyle and the way they fish. However, it was some time before I saw a dipper, and that was not until I had sat down on a sandy bank to survey the scene.
There was a splash farther down river and I half expected it to be a salmon but no, it was a dipper. These small, portly shaped birds will often just walk off a stone into the water but this one was different. It would flutter off a stone and then suddenly plunge into the water; it did this three or four times without, as far I could see, catching any fish. It then flew past me and sat on another rock just upstream. It was agitated for some reason and I guessed it might have reached the end of its territory. There was no other dipper in sight but it turned and once again flew past me, only about four metres away, as I sat there motionless. I always find it difficult to imagine that at one time dippers were persecuted for their so-called adverse effect on fish stocks, and even had a "bounty" on them.