I look at ducks, gulls, and so forth and the birds have webbed feet.
I am assuming webbed feet help for swimming.
Are there any birds that regularly swim and do not have webbed feet.
I don’t mean like my uncle who had a chicken that for some odd reason would go in the lake and swim. Actually it was a rooster, who knew they could swim?
Grebes don’t have webbed feet, and they are excellent swimmers. However that’s a bit of a cheat since the individual toes are flattened. Still there is a total absence of webbing.
If you are looking for swimming birds without any modifications to the feet, the dippers are the obvious answer. Fantastic swimmers, with perfectly normal birdy feet.
Moorhens have fairly ordinary-looking (if somewhat oversized) bird feet - and they do swim, although they spend much of their time walking on floating weed mats and marsh.
Coots swim a lot, and don’t have webbed feet (although they have flattened flanges on each individual toe/joint).