Dartmoor - The Dippers

Last week I was randomly scrolling the social media platforms and before long I noticed a trend, Dartmoor keeps coming up again and again. There were images of everything from epic landscapes to Lesser-spotted Woodpeckers and as a result a plan started to formulate. By Saturday evening a plan had formed and Steve, Elle and I were getting ready to head down first thing on Sunday morning.

We had some of our own local knowledge (albeit a little lacking) and a few more up to date pointers from the aforementioned social media. What we lacked in the knowledge department, we made up for in determination! We arrived at New Bridge on Dartmoor at 0815 and set off on the hunt for something to point the camera at.

Unbeknown to us at the time, we were in for a great day! So much so that I’m spreading this blog across two posts. This first part is going to focus on the wonderful Dippers that we had the pleasure of spending a large part of the morning with. The second will focus on the rest of the day, equally as rewarding with Oil Beetles, Grey Wagtails, Pearl-bordered Fritillaries, Yellowhammers and more!

We can’t deny that Dippers were on our minds from the get-go, but it took a long walk before we came across any on this stretch of the river Dart. There were plenty of distractions on the way up, Mergansers, Grey Wagtails and occasional calls from Wood Warblers were more than enough to stifle our progress.

Just after making a comment about the lack of Dippers I walked to the river’s edge, pointed the binoculars upstream and immediately spotted an adult Dipper bobbing on a nearby boulder.

We slowly made our way towards its position, careful to not spook it. Our initial plan was to set down in the banks of the River at wait for it to come to us, there is no point in chasing birds as they’ll never let you close. It will also cause unnecessary stress at this very sensitive time of year. On approaching the bank the Dipper comes rocketing past me and stops on the opposite bank. This is when I spot it, a young Dipper, which was subsequently fed by an adult bird.

We became ultra-cautious as we didn’t want to spook any of these birds, it could cause huge problems for the young if they didn’t successfully feed. However, it soon became apparent that they had no issues with our presence. The adult birds were constantly feeding the young (three were now visible) and coming towards us, leading to a truly magical experience.

Getting to witness these moments was fantastic, getting to photograph it was the icing on the cake! There were a number of challenges photographically, one being heat haze.

Heat haze occurs when the ground is heated by the sun and air next to the ground is subsequently heated, this hot hair then rises through the cooler air causing the shimmering effect which is also known as a mirage. Heat haze is devastating to images, it causes cameras to miss focus and images to become distorted. One way to overcome this is to shoot from a higher height and look down on the subject. This isn’t ideal when eye-level shots are more engaging and standing up would risk disturbing the birds.

Of the images taken, around 1/4 were ruined by the haze. This is better than with the Wheatears we were photographing a couple of weeks ago where it was more like 3/4 of the images were written off.

There was one heart-stopping moment during the morning, we all caught it on camera from different angles but I wish one of us had been filming.

We were watching two of the young on the opposite bank being fed by a parent bird, we were aware of the third young one sitting upstream but it was out of sight. Suddenly the parent launches towards us and dives into the water. There was lots of splashing as I looked down the camera and caught a glimpse of the young bird partially submerged with the parent on top. After seconds the parent bird was on the rocks in front of us but with no young one insight. We were frantically looking around to see if we could spot it, weighing up whether I needed to go in after it. To our relief Steve spotted it on a rock just downstream, looking dazed but otherwise unharmed. After a minute or so It flew back up to join the others. Below is the sequence of images taken during the drama.

We came away from the morning buzzing, lots of pictures and a privilege to experience those intimate moments. However, the day was only just getting going… Part two will be coming soon…