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Let's start a little sentimental today.

For me and my wife, the white-throated dipper is the symbol of our relationship. When Petra started coming to our home eight years ago, we would go for walks in the woods and talk to the dippers by the creek. We also met them on practically every trip around the neighborhood. I always filmed the dippers in the spring and then told Petra how they were doing. When we climbed the famous Kjerag mountain in Norway, a dipper was hopping on the snow wall near the top. Then we started to go on expeditions to the Bohemian Forest National Park and during our wanderings around the Vydra river we always had fun watching... guess who. One of the dippers even witnessed me making a proposal on a boulder by the river. Before the wedding, me and Petra wondered for a while if we should get the dipper engraved in our wedding rings. Petra is of the opinion that it is the same bird all along, following us across Europe and occasionally taking his wife with him. And I frankly have no convincing argument to refute that theory.

Dippers are simply my favourites and we make friends every spring. I usually film them feeding their chicks in the nest, which is made up of a leaf-and-moss ball placed directly above the water surface. Until last year, however, I was burdened with shame. I'd never seen how their neat little ball was actually formed. So, in late winter, I decided that I needed to change that and film the construction of the nest. Haha, that's easy to say. Finding a finished nest is no problem for me anymore. But figuring out when and where the dippers are yet to build? That's a different story.

I tried relying on one particular rock where the birds raise their young almost every year. As soon as the snow and ice came down, I went to check if there was a dipper couple at all. Luckily, they were already present. But it takes only a moment to build a nest, and the birds are done in a few days. So how do you guess the exact time? A camera trap with continuous sending of pictures to a mobile phone would be no good at this place, and I certainly could not go there every day. So I used another trick - my friends! Honza and Edita live a stone's throw away from the rock, so they got an exact description of the situation and several times a week they would walk around to check if anything was happening on the rock. In the end we missed it by a whisker and the dippers managed to build the basic ring of the nest secretly, but I got to film something in the freezing cold by the stream anyway

I must say, however, that the dippers played me good. Despite the original expectations, they were in no hurry with the construction and worked very casually. To get the few shots you are watching, I had to come five times and spend 21 cold hours in the hide. However, when you have running water gurgling under your feet, the time passes quite pleasantly :-)

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Equipment: Z Cam E2 + Metabones T Smart + Sigma 150-600 C + Panasonic 12-60 + Rode Videomic NTG

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White-throated dipper | Cinclus cinclus | Skorec vodní | Wasseramsel | Cincle plongeur | mirlo acuático europeo | merlo acquaiolo | обыкновенная оляпка

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