This morning we watch a dipper as it stands on a stone in the river below and sings for a while. Its beak hardly moves but it pumps hard with its throat to make an attractive warble. Like many birds that hold winter territories, it sings year round, and the females sing too. This was the bird song we had been unable to identify two days ago.
Then the dipper takes to feeding. Looking almost straight down we can see it flying underwater and poking around stones etc. Sometimes it allows itself to be carried along in the current, then disappears underwater and reappears on a rock upstream. Apart from a short preening session, it feeds almost non-stop for an hour.
Another dipper flies in, giving a contact call as it lands a few metres downstream. The first bird, which is standing on a rock, immediately stiffens, and adopts a more upright posture, with bill pointing skywards, dropped wingtips, and tail lowered and fanned. We can’t hear any calls. The intruding bird looks as though it was going to walk into the water, but changes its mind and flies off. The first bird relaxed and resumed feeding.
Back in Arena de Cabrales, we stop by the river and watch white and grey wagtails, dipper, black-birds, robins, song thrush, magpies, buzzards etc. A very dark red squirrel carries some prize in its mouth as it goes along the riverbank and up into an ivy‑covered tree. Great tits are singing noisily.
We are quite surprised to be able to by bread and fuel on Christmas Day, but life seems to go on as any normal Sunday and there are few trappings of Christmas as we know it. A few houses have lighted Christmas trees on their porches and there are a few coachloads of people going to church. The main celebrations of Christmas will take place on January 6th, the day that the three kings brought gifts for Jesus, and so here, too, gifts are exchanged on that date. There seems relatively little commercialisation of the season, though we are told that things are changing, especially in the cities.
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