{"id":16116,"date":"2016-01-09T16:18:49","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T00:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=16116"},"modified":"2016-01-09T16:18:49","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T00:18:49","slug":"dipper-blink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=16116","title":{"rendered":"Dipper blink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I learned something from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) this morning. Frank Ritcey of Kamloops was interviewed on the subject of why dippers dip. Alas, the short answer to that question was: We don&#8217;t know.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, Mr. Ritcey also pointed out that dippers have a white eyelid. Wow, while I had seen this many times when dipper watching, I had thought that I was seeing the bird&#8217;s nictitating membrane. I was wrong. I promptly went to my favourite spot for observing dippers and waited for a blink. My dippers did not disappoint.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>An American Dipper blinks and reveals its white eyelid. The eyelid is apparently covered with exceedingly small white feathers, some hint of which is apparent even at this resolution.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16118\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/dipper160109bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>While I watched dippers hunt, one brought\u00a0a clutch of kokanee eggs to the surface, and then, obligingly, blinked.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16117\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/dipper160109cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The dipper expedition was worth it for not only the shots of the blink, but this one of a dipper coming in for a landing on (what is clearly) a favourite perch in the stream.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16119\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/dipper160109as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I learned something from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) this morning. Frank Ritcey of Kamloops was interviewed on the subject of why dippers dip. Alas, the short answer to that question was: We don&#8217;t know.\u00a0 However, Mr. Ritcey also &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=16116\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16116"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16127,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16116\/revisions\/16127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}