Returning from Vail yesterday afternoon, my wife spotted an outlet mall in Dillon and wanted to do a bit of shopping. While she perused the merchandise, I wandered through the complex and came across a wooded stream that flowed past the stores. It was Straight Creek, which rises on the Continental Divide near the Eisenhower Tunnel and enters the Blue River just below the Lake Dillon dam.
There I saw a common dipper, also known as a water ouzel, feeding in the cool, turbulent waters. Our only aquatic songbird, dippers inhabit whitewater mountain streams of western North America, from Alaska to Mexico. They feed on insects, larvae and fish eggs, repeatedly dipping, diving, swimming and walking on the rocky bed to catch their prey. Females build their nest under bridges, on rock ledges, behind waterfalls or in other areas secure from flooding and up to five chicks are produced; a second clutch may also be raised in southern latitudes. Though nonmigratory, dippers often move from higher to lower elevations during the winter months, when ice and heavy snow cover many subalpine streams.
While birders associate these chunky, gray songbirds with pristine mountain wilderness, they adapt to streams near towns and cities as well (assuming the water is clear and unpolluted). Indeed, one might hike for miles along a remote whitewater stream without seeing one and then spot an ouzel in their suburban creek. Such is often the case with wildlife species; we might search for a particular bird at a nature preserve for hours without success, only to encounter the bird later in a roadside slough, on a golf course pond or in a trashy, weed-choked lot.
