This month, we have what I like to call a “swimmy bird,” typically when glassing a large body of water with a binocular, as in, “There’s an odd swimmy bird way out there.” That swimmy bird would require a scope to identify, as it’s just a black-and-white blob. The various species of swimmy birds are birds from quite different species, genera, families, and even orders. A distant black-and-white blob on the water could be a duck, a grebe, a phalarope, or a loon.

This swimmy bird is probably not a phalarope or a loon, but the other options are in play, and correct identification may require knowing the smaller details of pattern in a few species.