Country diary: it looks like a songbird, but the dipper is aquatic to its bones

Garsdale, Cumbria: In the water, the wings are both oars and hydrofoils, angled to harness the flow and surf the body down

A few days ago I was asked if I was a birder and apparently I pulled an indecisive face. Now I'm proving the point. The air quivers with curlew music, but I am walking head down. In my defence, drizzle is gusting up the valley, and I'm looking for water vole feeding signs, hoping for evidence to match some promising burrows a little way downstream. There are plenty of clumps of rush, the stems trimmed at 45 degree angles, but droppings are elusive - washed away or disintegrated by the rain, I suppose.

If I hadn't been focusing down, I might not have seen the dipper, dead in the rushes. Worse, I might have trodden on it.