Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

This cormorant, slightly smaller than the Double-crested Cormorant, is the only cormorant that can plunge-dive to catch fish, though it also catches them as other cormorants do, while swimming. In Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, local names that allude to this call include “pig duck” (pato cerdo, pato puerco), “dirty duck” (pato chancho), and “oinking duck (pato gruñón). Its range is rapidly expanding northward in the United States.