Dippers eat mostly aquatic insects and insect larvae. However, they will occasionally take other invertebrates, as well as small fish or fish eggs. For the longest time, I had only ever seen it eat juvenile fish (alevin and fry) in the winter, presumably when invertebrates are uncommon.
It came as a surprise to see a dipper feeding a small fish to its chicks in a nest. Mind you, the chicks are still deep in the nest so I did not see them actually eat the fish, but the fish was delivered to them, and the parent left the nest without it.
A dipper stopped on a rock in the stream to look around for predators. It has a fish in its bill. It then flew up to its nest and fed it to its chicks.
Surprise! I did not know that Dippers caught fry, Kokanee I gather. I’ve seen the hunt but I have never seen one come up with a fish. Actually, I’ve never seen them with anything in their beak but assumed they caught bugs.
If it left the fry in the nest I wonder how big the chicks are. Maybe they will peck at it.
And, I was of the understanding the fry would have ridden the stream current down to the lake by now, long before late May.