Dippers on the Dee by Richard Cook

Description

There are five species of dipper spread across the world. Dippers on the Dee deals with Cinclus cinclus, the one that most people see in UK.

Dippers are the world’s only truly aquatic passerine bird – they dive and swim/run along a stony river or stream, holding on with their strong legs and feet as they hunt in their natural habitat of fast flowing rivers, burns, waterfalls and sometime lochs. There is magic in seeing one of these birds standing in the middle of a cascade or waterfall, or on a moss covered rock mid-water in a river, or even in the backwaters of major rivers. A dipper diving into a raging torrent is a sight well worth witnessing.

With a warming climate, pollution, and the acidification of rivers and burns, habitats across the planet are under great pressure. The dipper is an indicator of how clean our waters are. If polluted, many forms of aquatic life would disappear, resulting in the food chain being broken, the results of which would be catastrophic for the dipper.

I hope that recording a year in the life of these wonderful birds demonstrates how much beauty and wildlife exists just on our doorstep, in our local woods and waterways, and inspires people to discover it for themselves.

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Aberdeen born and bred, Richard Cook has held a life-long passion for wildlife and photography. For many years he combined the two with his other love, the sea and what lives under its surface. At a very early age he trained to SCUBA dive, from then on there was no holding him back. He dived all round the world’s seas, always with a camera photographing the life beneath the waves. This led to having numerous articles published in the diving press as well as working for a television company as a videographer on underwater videos.

Since retiring from diving he has continued with the same passion on dry land, particularly on the banks of his local river the Dee. Over a few years he has walked from its source high up in the Cairngorms on the Braeriach plateau to where the river spills into the cold North Sea at Aberdeen harbour. All the while photographing plants, insects, mammals and fish. Richard is at his happiest when out in camouflage clothing photographing nature as it happens.

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