Walk along the Browney

So, yesterday was the hottest September 30th in a hundred years! It certainly felt good...and deserved a country walk. So we went down to the River Browney and immediately spotted a dipper (Cinclus cinclus), "scudding low over water on whirring wings", as the bird book says they do. But instead of disappearing around a corner as stated, it stopped on a point bar and showed us its white breast. The bird book also says that dippers are "best found by watching up and downstream from bridges over suitable waterways", which is where we were over the River Browney on the A690.

   Once in Colorado, we saw five dippers in a row scud past us at a picnic site along a river. We could hardly believe our eyes, and the local shopkeeper at the pet food (bird seed) store simply didn't believe us at all. But we know what we saw...


From the Browney bridge near the Honest Lawyer pub, we took a path along the river established by the Woodland Trust. Lined with oak trees, acorns crunched underfoot. The path led into fields which are being returned to woodland by the Trust. We saw the fruits of our labors last year when we helped plant trees there; they are now leafing beyond the tall grasses that have invaded the fields. A truly lovely day...And now we hear that October 1st also broke a heat record, with 30° in Yorkshire!!



Kightley, C. et al. (1998) Pocket Guide to the Birds of Britain and North-West Europe. Sussex: Pica, p. 205.