Hi, I’m Sue, the new rivers trainee for Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.

I’ve been spending time here in Mid Wales since I was a child and we’ve had many happy family holidays on a farm near Newbridge-on-Wye.

Since I’ve been living close to the river Wye, my passion for the river, and the creatures that depend on it, has continued to grow. By the time I came to live here, I was already a keen nature photographer, with a special interest in kingfishers. I started to spend a lot of time on the riverbank with my camera. In January 2022, I photographed a dipper and noticed that the bird was ringed. I sent the ring details to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and received an email with details of when and where the bird was ringed. It turns out that the bird was a female who had been ringed on my birthday, over 3 years ago. The dippers in this area are part of an ongoing study project, which started monitoring dippers here in 1978, providing valuable data on survival, breeding and movements of the birds.

Understanding the White-Throated Dipper

The white-throated dipper (Cinclus cinclus) is Britain's only aquatic songbird. The dipper is about 18cm long, rotund, and has a short tail. Dippers have chestnut brown feathers, with a white throat and breast. They weigh 55-75g and have a wingspan of 25-30cm, making them smaller than a blackbird. To find their prey, the birds use their strong wings to propel them to the river bed, then their long toes with powerful claws act like crampons as it walks along the stony river bed. Some caddis fly larvae build stone cases, which the dipper will remove by bashing the larvae on a rock. Dippers also have unusually high haemoglobin levels in their blood, enabling them to store large amounts of oxygen as they dive underwater. They also have a special flap which seals their nose to prevent water rushing and they have exceptionally well-developed eye muscles, which control the shape of the lenses to aid underwater vision. 

Why Dippers matter for river health

Dippers are a fantastic indicator of the quality of the aquatic environment. Their prey includes mayfly and caddis fly larvae, and also small fish and shrimp, which are also highly sensitive to changes in water acidity and pollution, and are therefore an important bio-monitoring species for freshwater habitats. Their prey are also sensitive to their environment: mayfly larvae are sensitive to changes in water quality, and caddis fly larvae are sensitive to changes in sediment. Dippers are dependent on clean, sediment-free rivers so it is vital that we work to restore the health of our rivers.

Fieldwork and ringing

In May 2022, I was lucky enough to be able to accompany local ornithologist and dipper expert Tony Cross to a nest site, to ring the nestlings. Tony has been ringing and monitoring nest sites for over 20 years and now monitors nearly 400 sites. My first sighting of a fledgling came in June of that year. I had been volunteering at Gilfach nature reserve and watching a pair of dippers flying around with food. One day I went down with my camera and was delighted to see a fledgling being fed by an adult. Since photographing that first ringed bird, I have photographed a further 8 individuals along the same stretch of the river. This week, I went on my first training session to become a bird ringer. We checked 11 sites, in the dark in wet and windy conditions. The roost sites are not easily accessed, almost always being above flowing water. We caught 6 birds altogether, which are higher numbers than last year, ringed those that didn't have rings, and checked/measured the ones which already had rings. It was great being able to see the birds close up, and a special treat to see the bird that I’ve seen most of on the river this year, 47N. 

The knowledge I have gained about dippers, and other species which depend on the river, is part of what drives me to want to be involved with river restoration.