Mari Carter, age l4, of Omaha, Neb., for her question:
What kind of bird is the water ouzel?
In olden Europe, the quaint word ouzel was a name for the sweet singing Old World blackbird. The water ouzel is a sort of blackbird, but he is no songster. He resembles his relatives the wrens and thrushes. However, his amazing qualities make him one of the most remarkable birds.
We expect fishes to swim and birds to fly. Penguins and many diving birds are expert fishermen but a diving bird who swims and even dines under water is surprising. such a fellow is the water ouzel, and he has still more surprising qualities. He is not related to the diving birds, most of whom have webbed feet. He is a relative of the robin, and he has unwebbed robin type feet meant for walking and perching.
His underwater antics are performed with eyes wide open. This trick is not too difficult because his eyes are covered with windows of glassy skin. He has an extra pair of eyeIids, covered with feathers, for normal blinking. His dark feathers are thick and oily to repel the water and he has an undercoat of down to keep him warm. The water ouzel needs warmth for he remains busy even when the temperature drops to 50 below zero.
Rough weather and rough water seem to delight him. He likes to live by a high mountain stream foamy with white rapids, and he dives and swims even when the chilly water is choked with chunks of ice. Sometimes he plunges into the billows from a slippery rock in mid stream and you would think he is bent on suicide. sometimes he strides from the shore into the water and continues until he disappears
Experts once thought that the water ouzel walked along underwater on the stream bed. More careful observations showed that he swam underwater with fast beats of his stubby wings, searching for water beetles and their eggs. His diet of eggs and larvae of the dragonfly and caddis fly, plus a few snails, is found and usually eaten underwater.
The American water ouzel lives in Alaska and by the high, chilly streams of the Rockies and the Andes. He looks like a slate colored robin with a head and neck of charcoal brown. He has cousins in the high mountains of Europe and Asia. One enjoys life l6,000 feet up the Himalayas, and a small red breasted water ouzel lives right at the edge of the northern glaciers.
Water ouzels are splendid parents. Their nest is a globe of tender mosses lined with soft leaves and shoots. It is built on a rocky ledge, often right under a plunging cataract. There are three t0 seven glossy white eggs and there may be three broods a year. The shaggy chicks are speckled and both parents devote all their time to feeding and training them for life in and out of a rough and chilly mountain stream.