I well remember that this time last year, and for that matter, the year before, I saw Grey Wagtail regularly when I was waiting in my river side hide. This of course, is no surprise because both species have almost identical habitat requirements and anywhere that Dippers are found, Grey Wagtails will be close behind. They are even known to nest next to each other, that is, close to, or above water, under a bridge or behind a log and so on. However, it is fair to say that Grey Wagtails are a little less demanding and they can be found along the banks of muddy rivers and streams which is a habitat that no self respecting Dipper would ever frequent. So the rule is probably this, find a Dipper and Wagtails will be near, but finding a Wagtail will not necessarily find you a Dipper. At this time of the year the males, who have a breeding plumage and an eclipse plumage are just starting to attain the solid black bib that they only have in the height of the breeding season. They are quite noisy at this time of year and one bird has just displayed in front of me, singing a song and then parachute gliding with fluttering wings from rock to rock. It was literally on the rocks on the waterfall just in front of me and I managed one or two photos, one particularly good one when he was in the middle of his noisy song.
I walked back up river after a couple of hours and was pleased to see a Dipper not that far from the hide. It was singing away loudly from a boulder that I must have seen a Dipper perched on at least 100 times in the last 3 years. He saw me even though I was 25 metres away and then flew up to another favourite Dipper boulder. He disappeared from view and then as expected, doubled back to fly down towards the hide. It wasn't many seconds before I saw another, this one was much more silent, obviously a female and just like the male she doubled back to fly down stream to join her mate. How many times have I seen that? In short, there was no obvious nesting behaviour observed today.