Driving down the Poudre Canyon on my way home from a backpacking trip this month, I wondered out loud what the word “Ouzel” meant as I passed a popular picnic area in the canyon. A few days later after posting the video below, someone told me. Water ouzel is the old name for American Dippers. These are fascinating birds that I had just spent a half hour watching on the hike out from a 3-day backpacking trip.
The first time I saw these birds was in 2020 in a stream perhaps 20 miles away from this month’s sighting. We were again backpacking along a branch of the Poudre River and noticed these small gray birds throwing themselves violently into rushing rapids again and again. They’d come up many feet from where they disappeared and astonishingly we concluded they must be swimming underwater.
Researching what we had seen when I got home, I realized they were American Dippers. As Cornell says at that link, they are the only truly aquatic songbird in North America.
We saw them again along another tributary to the Poudre that same year and then this year we found them on Fall Creek just above CSU Mountain Campus in Pingree Park. They are recognizable from their funny dipping dance that never seems to stop until they dive into the water. I took some video and you can see both the dance and the swimming.
Take a few minutes to watch these fascinating creatures play in this rushing stream. If you get the blog via email, you can see the video on my YouTube channel HERE. (Subscribe while you’re there!)
American Dippers in Fall Creek, Colorado, August 2022
I have yet to weave a sketch tapestry about these birds because I haven’t figured out how to depict their delightful dance and swim routine, but I’m working on it!
I didn’t bring my loom on that short trip, but this spindle had quite a whirl. We sat at this lovely lake for many hours and I did a bit of spinning, basking in the sun, and watching various dogs and people braver than I swim in this ice-melt water.
Spinning in the backcountry of Colorado, 2022
The trail we took on this trip goes through several miles of the Cameron Peak fire burn area from 2020. There are still vast areas that are completely void of vegetation, but there are some grasses and flowers coming back here and there. In spots that were less fiercely burned, there are already small aspen trees poking up.
Flowers coming back at the edge of the Cameron Peak burn area near Fort Collins, CO, 2022. Fire was in 2020.
Have you had any adventures this summer? Did any of those adventures make it into a tapestry weaving? Those of you in the Summer of Tapestry class had plenty of adventures with resulting tapestries. It was wonderful to see the creative outpouring from the prompts in that class. If you’d still like to take it, registration is still open. The work posted there is quite inspiring! Information is HERE.