Dippers, the only aquatic songbird, prefer cold, fast-flowing, streams where they mainly eat invertebrates found on the stream bottom.
On Sunday, a half-dozen dippers were scouring the waters of Kokanee Creek below the spawning channel when one surfaced with a Kokanee salmon egg in its bill. It appears to be an unfertilized egg that washed downstream from the channel—fertilized eggs are orangish; unfertilized eggs turn a milky white. A second later, the egg had been eaten.
Oooh – we could call these tasty morsels ‘Kokanee Pearls’, perhaps! What a lovely photograph, Alistair.