Dipper.

We went for walk down in the Glen before lunch today and as we strolled by the river we were musing on the shortage of wildlife. Four or five years ago, Sis and spouse visited and were delighted to see so many dippers and wagtails on this stretch of water; since then, we’ve hardly seen any. No sooner had the words tripped off our tongues, than there was a dipper - so we stopped and watched it for some time and took loads of photographs. Unfortunately, I only had the bridge camera which doesn’t have the sharpest of lenses at full extension, but the pictures didn’t look too bad. 10 minutes, and 100 yards later, we saw another one, took more pictures and mused over whether it was following us.
 
Having done one very satisfying circuit, we decided to go around again and, lo, where we had seen the first dipper, there were two of them. They were bathing and preening together then turned to squabbling a bit so we assumed that they must be a courting couple. It was during one of their tiffs that a wagtail came along and broke up the party and then seemed to go off with one of the dippers leaving the other to sulk.
 
I don’t know what thoughts went through Herself’s mind but I was reminded of a recent bee keeping talk that referred to the “unusual mating habits” of the British dark bee. I did have the temerity to ask the speaker what was an unusual mating habit but, before he could answer, a stentorian voice from the back called out, “FANTASTIC!” It took several minutes to restore order.