Now that the female has started to incubate her clutch of eggs which takes 17 days, there is going to be a lengthy period when not much is happening. The pattern of behaviour that I observed this morning is likely to be repeated daily and it's going to be a quiet period in the breeding cycle. When I arrived I couldn't see any Dippers, I assumed that the female was in the nest and the male was away finding food. AsI lay under cover watching a bird arrived, splashing in to the water and then swimming up to the rocks beneath the nest before flying up. It was silent as it entered the nest and I had the feeling that this was the female, this proved to be correct because the noisy male arrived a few minutes later, singing his call as he flew in and then breaking in to song before he visited the nest, perhaps with food but I couldn't be sure. I have established that there is approximately 30 minutes between the males feeding visits to the nest so it can get a little tedious as you wait with nothing going on. Sometimes the male sits nearby, singing away and preening before he flies up or down stream to find food. Twice this morning the female left the nest to find her own food, whether this means that she has not started to incubate properly yet I am not certain, but as "sitting" progresses I will be able to see if this is normal behaviour.
With glorious sunshine at around lunchtime, on my walk back, there was a lot of bird activity includin singing Chiffchaffs, Blackcap Warblers and the usual Blue Tits.
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