water-blackbird

Updated: May 3, 2025

But to destroy these under-sized fish was not sport, and as at that moment a water-colley passed I determined to let the trout alone, and observe his ways. Colley means a blackbird; water-colley, the water-blackbird or water-ousel called the dipper in the North. In districts where the bird is seldom seen it is occasionally shot and preserved as a white blackbird.

Richard Jefferies - The Life of the Fields