Dialogue tags in The Flight of the Heron, and some brief thoughts on writing advice

I was musing about the different styles of dialogue tag used in fiction, and thought this would be another interesting topic to investigate in the language of Flight of the Heron.

First of all, some definitions: for the purposes of this post, a dialogue tag is a verb which has a piece of dialogue as its object—most often the word 'said', as in 'Do not be a fool!' said the young man in the loch.
( More long-winded language nerdery... )