More About Seabirds

 In answer to Vinay's questions:

Loons and some cormorant species can stay underwater for a minute and a half. Some cormorants can stay under for over two minutes. It's quite a bit less than that for diving ducks and grebes. The hollow bones (and the huge amount of air they carry with them) definitely makes it hard for them to stay underwater. Most diving birds can compress their feathers flat against the sides of their bodies to eliminate any extra air.

The record for a human holding their breath underwater is over 19 minutes, but in that span of time the human is doing absolutely nothing. Diving birds, on the other hand, are doing a lot.

Diving ridiculously deep
Flying
Going really fast (watch the bubbles behind it as it surfaces)
Foraging
Or staying above water and winning the cuteness award.

Notice the different swimming styles of the birds. You can't see what's going on with the Imperial Cormorant's rear end, but it has the same way of swimming as the loon: it paddles with it's webbed hind feet. The murres (a type of alcid) flap their wings and steer with their feet. They're sort of the halfway point between flying birds and penguins; they compromise between flight and swimming.

Now take a close look at those grebes. Their feet do not have webbing; instead, each of the three toes is lobed and flattened. But that's only the beginning of the weirdness. What's it doing with those feet? Is it paddling with them? Only a little bit. If you look closely, it's not just waving them back and forth.

It's spinning them.

Recent research has shown that most of the swimming power in grebes comes not from pushing the water backwards like loons or humans, but by creating hydrodynamic lift similar to a boat propeller.
I love grebes.

Now on to the subject of larids:

I'm using this terminology a bit broadly. Technically, larids are only things in the genus Larus. But I needed a name shorter than "Gulls and their Allies" with which to refer to this group. When I say "larid", I am referring to any bird in the suborder Lari except for the alcids. Or, in normal English, any gull, tern, skimmer, skua, or jaeger.

Albatrosses actually aren't larids by anyone's definition. They're a type of tubenose, belonging to the order Procellariiformes. These birds all have specialized nostrils with a salt removal gland that lets them drink seawater without ill effect (other than secreting an incredibly concentrated salt solution from their noses). The main visible difference between tubenoses and larids is that tubenoses almost never flap their wings (except for the storm-petrels, which are too small to be confused with any gull).

All in all, you really don't have to worry about confusing tubenoses and larids while near the shore: it is highly unlikely that you will see a tubenose. They spend nearly their entire lives at sea and only come on land to nest and lay eggs. They're usually at least a mile from shore, though sometimes after storms they are blown inland and show up in ridiculous places (like the Salton Sea in southern California).

And now, selected videos of various coastal birds (I don't have a good video camera, so I'll refer you to YouTube):

Grebe courtship (the best part is at the end)
Bufflehead (a diving duck)
No video can do tern flight justice, but this is pretty good.
Slow-mo Jaeger (once again, you really have to see this kind of thing in real life)
Hanging out and looking cool
A couple of storm-petrels. Hatteras is pretty much the one place where you have a chance of seeing them.
Awwwww...
Wait, this might be even cuter. The babies show up about halfway through.

Enjoy!