Wasseramsel

Bestimmung

The white-throated dipper is about 18 centimetres (7.1 in) long, rotund and short tailed. The head of the adult (gularis and aquaticus) is brown, the back slate-grey mottled with black, looking black from a distance, and the wings and tail are brown. The throat and upper breast are white, followed by a band of warm chestnut which merges into black on the belly and flanks. The bill is almost black, the legs and irides brown. C. c. cinclus has a black belly band. The young are greyish brown and have no chestnut band.<p>The male has a sweet wren-like song. During courtship the male sings whilst he runs and postures, exhibiting his snowy breast, and when displaying he will take long and high flights, like those of the common kingfisher, accompanied by sharp metallic calls clink, clink, different from the normal zil.

Taxonomie

The white-throated dipper was described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Sturnus cinclus. The current genus Cinclus was introduced by the German naturalist Moritz Balthasar Borkhausen in 1797. The name cinclus is from the Ancient Greek word kinklos that was used to describe small tail-wagging birds that resided near water. Of the five species now placed in the genus, a molecular genetic study has shown that the white-throated dipper is most closely related to the other Eurasian species, the brown dipper (Cinclus pallasii).<p>There are 14 subspecies of which one is now extinct (with †):

Wissenschaftlicher Name

Cinclus cinclus

Autorität

(Linnaeus, 1758)

Ordnung

Passeriformes

Familie

Wasseramseln (Cinclidae)

Gattung

Cinclus

Verbreitung und Lebensraum

Zugverhalten

Vollzieher

Verhalten

Zugverhalten: Vollzieher.

Schutzstatus

Bestandstrend: rückläufig.

Bestandstrend

rückläufig