Wednesday 8 June 2016

Dippers on the River Yarrow Revisited

It's been a while since I first saw the Dippers at the weir on the River Yarrow earlier this year. They were nest-building at the time and so the first brood will have hatched and dispersed by now. However, as Dippers often have two and sometimes even three broods in a year, I decided to return today to see how they were getting on.





I'd spotted a single Common Tern over the lake when I first arrived and so I stopped for a shot on the way back. I still couldn't see evidence of any other Terns about.

This Common Buzzard flew over the lake as I watched the Tern. It was shrieking quite a lot and it was occasionally mobbed by Carrion Crows.



There was a pair of Great Crested Grebes nesting under the overhanging vegetation on the far side of the lake. Here's one of them doing a bit of nest strengthening.


The Tern was catching fish and taking it back to the floating raft where it obviously had bred this year. When I looked closer at might my photographs I could see that there were two young, but only one adult bird was present. Perhaps it had been predated. And then, as I was leaving I noticed something in the water near where the Tern was perched on the floating raft. Is is just a fish, or perhaps worse, a mink? I can't quite make it out.


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