Shorebird Families (Waders)

This group gathers taxon/Bird Families subcategory members that are themselves bird families belonging to the shorebirds, chiefly within the order Charadriiformes, small to medium-sized wading birds typically found foraging along coastlines, mudflats, wetlands and open ground rather than swimming or diving for food. It spans the plovers, compact, round-bodied birds that hunt largely by sight, running and stopping abruptly to snatch prey off the surface, and the sandpipers, a diverse family whose members range enormously in bill length and shape, from short, stubby bills suited to picking prey off the surface to long, probing bills adapted for reaching deep into soft mud or sand. Many families gathered here undertake some of the longest migratory journeys of any animal group, with several species flying nonstop for days at a time between breeding grounds in the far north and wintering grounds thousands of kilometers away in the Southern Hemisphere.