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Some birds dive into the water for food. Two diving strategies are differentiated: surface diving birds dive from the surface of the water and swim actively underwater; and plunge diving birds dive from the air into the water. Plunge diving birds may use the momentum from the plunge to propel themselves underwater, whereas others may swim actively.
Baptornis ("diving bird") is a genus of flightless, aquatic birds from the Late Cretaceous, some 87-80 million years ago (roughly mid-Coniacian to mid-Campanian faunal stages). The fossils of Baptornis advenus , the type species, were discovered in Kansas , which at its time was mostly covered by the Western Interior Seaway , a shallow shelf sea .
Poliocephalus rufopectus is an aquatic diving bird in the grebe order. [3]Poliocephalus rufopectus (G.R.Gray) was originally described by the English ornithologist George Robert Gray as Podiceps rufopectus G.R.Gray, 1843 (in subgenus Poliocephalus). [4]
The appearance of "grebe" in the English language was introduced in 1768 by the Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant when he adopted the word for the family. Some of the smaller species are often referred to as "dabchick", which originated in the mid 16th century English as they were said to be chick-like birds that dive.
The type locality is Iceland. [4] The species is now placed together with the thick-billed murre in the genus Uria that was described in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. [5] The genus name is from Ancient Greek ouria, a waterbird mentioned by Athenaeus. The specific epithet aalge is an old Danish word for an auk. [6]
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The deployment of capillary depth recorders, which record the maximum dive depth undertaken by a bird, has shown that while some species, such as the wandering albatross, do not dive deeper than a metre, some species, such as the light-mantled albatross, have a mean diving depth of almost 5 m (16 ft) and can dive as deep as 12.5 m (41 ft). [34]
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