What is the best bird, and why is it the Dipper?

American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus)

A couple of posts back, I blathered about how we judge something to be beautiful or not. If most would look at the photo above, and then read the title of this post, they would think I am a total idiot. They would be wrong only if adding the word “total”. I admit that Dippers are bland and rather nondescript to look at, but where they lack flash they more than make up for in pure wonder.

There are five species of Dipper in the world: Rufous-Throated Dipper (Argentina), White-Capped Dipper (Bolivia, Chile), Brown Dipper (East Palearctic/Asia), White-Throated Dipper (Europe), and The American Dipper (Central/North America). The Dipper stands as the lone member of the Cinclidae Family, which by itself is a fascinating fact when you consider some of the other birds standing alone in their respective families carry image-evoking names like Oxpeckers, Ploughbills and Lyrebirds. Now, check me on my language skills, but Cinclus, I believe, is derived from the Greek for “one who dives”. And here is the perfect segue for why the drab Dipper is the best bird: Dippers are the only songbird out of the near 6,500 that share the passeriformes order that actively swims underwater. They will stand at river’s edge, on rocky streams, plunge into the rapids and, using their non-webbed feet, walk along the bed in search of larvae, insects, small fish.

They have a few traits developed via evolution particular to their lifestyle: 1) Their songs and calls are elevated to a pitch that will allow the sounds to be heard over the roar of rushing rapids; 2) They bop their bodies, in an unbelievably charming way, to emulate the motion of the water, aiding them in camouflage. The Ferry and I once watched one bop-bop-bopping along water’s edge, and as soon as it sallied up the beach and away from the river, it walked like most other birds: no bop; 3) They have a “nictating membrane”, kind of like a second eyelid that helps them see under water (also their eyelid feathers are pale, so when they blink the observer sees little catches of white; 4) Their bones are solid, unlike other birds with hollow bones, and this solidity helps reduce buoyancy. This list could go on and on, surely! Magic, pure magic!

So, beyond the uniqueness, what makes them the best bird? Well, a lot of it has to do with experiential elevation. I once watched a sunset deep in the Amazon Basin, the daystar dipping low over the jungle-coated river, parrots coming to roost by the hundreds, a low hum of bossanova from inside the clapboard shack of a bar. It was a stupidly humid evening, and I was drinking an impossibly cold beer. Experiential elevation: despite its refreshing coldness, the beer I was drinking, removed from the setting in which it was being consumed, would taste about as delicious as a lightly warmed Keystone Ice, maybe a just-under-room-temp Bud Light, at best (I refuse to apologize for snobbery: those two beers are quantifiably disgusting). But because of place, because of setting, that crappy beer in the Amazon Basin remains one of the best I have ever drank.

Experiential elevation: The Dipper chooses as its home only the most beautiful of places. You will not go to the Brownsville Dump in South Texas to see a rare Dipper spotting; you will not find them perched in their own whitewash above a subway grate; you will never watch them follow cattle about, clambering to snag the flies from a pile of freshly flopped fieldpatty. You will find them here:

The Ferry (Rferryous maximus) watching Dippers on the Big Sur River

When visiting Big Sur, you will not be disappointed by anything: the views, the Henry Miller Library, a Deetjen’s Inn breakfast, and we most definitely were not disappointed by our year’s first spotting of the American Dipper. We ate sandwiches, sat on the rocks for over an hour, enrapt by the charm of a pair doing what they do in yet another of the beautiful places in which they do it. While everything in Big Sur that day merits a spotlight, everything sits in disadvantage when pitted against a Dipper. You could watch a Sea Eagle land lovingly on a Polar Bear’s shoulder while the bear makes you a grilled cheese toasty in between rounds of dominoes against a Wolverine and the San Diego Chicken and still that scene would come in a distant second to but one minute of a Dipper bopping along and swimming around in a mountain stream. Seriously. What is the best bird, and why is it the Dipper…

Coming soon: January recap!