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American Dipper : American Dipper Puyuqumaaraq The American Dipper is one of the most unusual songbirds in North America. If you've been lucky enough to find it in fast flowing clearwater creeks and rivers of the Delta, and you've taken time to watch it forage for food, you know what I'm talking about. It not only hunts for insects and aquatic larvae along the shoreline and while swimming in the water; it also often dives under the surface of the water and walks along the bottom to catch its favorite foods. It swims underwater by using powerful strokes of its wings and can "fly" down to 20 foot depths chasing prey such as water beetles and even small minnows. It can forage on the bottom of creeks in which the current is too fast and the water too deep for humans to stand. The dipper is the only songbird in North America adapted to forage like this, and does so with the help of not only a dense soft coat of feathers heavily waterproofed with preen oil (its preen gland is ten times the size of that of any other songbird), but also with a movable flap that closes over its nostrils and a well-developed white nictitating membrane (third eyelid) that is drawn across its eyes to keep them clear of dirt suspended in the water. Fascinating stuff, eh? There's more. The Yupik name for the dipper is Puyuqumaar(aq), which loosely translates as, "the little bird that looks like smoke." Take a quick look in your bird guide and you'll see what mean. The bird gets its common English name from its habit of rapidly bobbing its body up and down, some 40-60 times per minute. It has only one other common name. Water ouzel, which is derived from Old English. Understandably, this is the name they prefer in jolly old England (there is another species of the bird living there) and in Canada. Strangely, its scientific name Cinclus mexicanus means, "a kind of bird from Mexico." Some polyglot bird! As long as its sources of food, creeks and rivers, are open all year long, the dipper does not migrate. Sol courtship and nest building may take place fairly early in the Delta. Courtship begins with the male stretching his neck upward, bill vertical, wings down and partly spread. He then struts and sings directly in front of the female. Sometimes both the male and female perform together, ending in an upward jump with both their breasts touching. During these displays the male sings in a bubbling wren-like voice that rises above even the roar of nearby rapids and waterfalls. Meanwhile, a most bizarre nest is being fashioned by the female. Looking like a Hobbit hut or Indian oven, it is built of interwoven green and yellow mosses and fine grasses on the ledge of a cliff face or behind a waterfall. The one I found this summer was about a foot in diameter and had an arched opening near the bottom. It was the most unusual nest I have ever seen in Alaska. The female lays 4-5 white eggs in this little Hobbit hut and incubates them alone for 13-17 days. After the eggs hatch, the female feeds the young by herself. While she is involved in this, the male may start a family with another female not far away. About 24-25 days after hatching the young leave the nest, tended by both mom and dad while they learn to forage for themselves. Dipper young are somewhat more precocial than those of other songbirds, since they can cimb, dive, and swim on departing the nest. Dippers are among the few species that live all year round even as far north as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain where in rare places there are warm springs that sustain a few families of dippers in the middle of winter. Since this is Inupiat Eskimo country, they have a most interesting name for the bird, Arnaq kiviruq, meaning "woman sinking," probably in reference to how it looks as it submerges under the water. It is because these remarkable birds live in such wild areas as the Lower Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that they are for me a symbol of true wilderness. May this symbol and the wilderness they represent last forever. » List of Yupik Birds

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