DOLLAR GLEN is a magical place at any time of year, and in early winter its sheltered confines from the worst of the weather ensures it is an excellent place for a wildlife walk.

As I ascended the glen from Mill Green, a dipper whirred-away from its perch on a boulder in the middle of the Dollar Burn.

Despite the season, dippers sing at this time of year as they set-up their territories.

It is a soft and melancholy tune that is often difficult to hear above the noise of the tumbling water.

Dippers are incredible creatures – songbirds that can dive under the water so as to feast upon invertebrates.

It is a great evolutionary adaptation, for it means they can feed even when the ground is frosted hard, unlike birds such as blackbirds, which find life a struggle during such periods.

In dark, shady recesses further-up the glen, I found a proliferation of hart’s-tongue fern.

It is so-called because its shape is said to resemble the tongue of a deer, with its pointy, curly tips. This fern only prospers in damp, shady places.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a brown flickering by a moss-covered oak trunk.

It was a treecreeper, a wee mouse of a bird that spiralled its way up the trunk, probing crevices in the bark with its slender, curved beak.

The beak is like a precision instrument, working like miniature forceps in extracting small invertebrates sheltering in nooks and crannies.

Once the treecreeper had reached half-way up the oak, it fluttered to the base of an adjacent tree, and repeated its methodical searching once more.

In parts of Scotland, an old name for the treecreeper is "tree speiler" – with speiler being a Scottish word for "climber".

In south-west England, it is known as the tree mouse – another highly appropriate name.