The early bird

What a difference the weather makes. Yesterday finished in glorious sunshine with a magnificent sunset and today it's gloomy and drizzly.

Another trip to find Dippers resulted in some success.  Having worked out which bits of the river the bird seems to like to hunt in, I was able to choose the parts that I thought might give me the best chance of some decent shots.  The main shows the moment when the Dipper came up from the water with a caddis fly larvae.  The bird proceeded to shake the larvae vigorously until eventually the outer shell came off revealing the grub insid, which you can see in the first extra.   The final shot is a portrait of the bird perched on a log that was caught in mid stream.

It's a sad indictment of our society that people thoughtlessly throw rubbish away, littering the countryside, rather than disposing of it properly.  As a result when it's been raining heavily a lot of rubbish can get carried into the rivers and streams and ends up getting caught on branches and rocks.  Leaving aside the problems that this causes for the wildlife, you really don't want to end up with bits of plastic or old fabric in the shot.