Waders, gulls and terns | Charadriiformes

Families in this order

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• ▸Plovers and allies | CharadriiLarge eyes are the mark of the group: these birds find their food by sight and take it from the surface, which gives them their stop-start gait - run, halt, peck, run again. Bills vary widely within the group, from short and blunt to long and chisel-shaped, but the foot is the same throughout: three toes forward and a hind toe that is small or missing. The chicks are only guarded and brooded; from their first day they gather their own food. Anyone who comes too close to the nest is led away by a parent that stumbles ahead of him calling loudly, as though its wing were broken.

  • Stone-curlews | Burhinidae2 speciesLarge yellow eyes and a short, heavy bill with a swollen tip: these are birds of dusk and darkness that spend the day motionless on the ground, where their sandy, streaked plumage makes them hard to separate from the soil. The legs are long, with a conspicuously thickened joint halfway down that gives the group its name, and carry three short, thick toes with no hind toe. They live on dry, stony or sandy open country, often far from water, taking beetles, worms, lizards and mice on foot. The nest is a scrape with two eggs, and as evening falls a far-carrying, wailing call gives them away.
  • Avocets and stilts | Recurvirostridae2 speciesExceptionally long legs and a thin, flexible bill, either straight or curved upwards: waders that walk belly-deep into shallow, often brackish or saline water. The front toes are webbed, so they can also feed while swimming; one build picks prey one at a time from the surface, the other sweeps the half-opened bill sideways through the water and feels what passes between the mandibles. In every species the plumage is a crisp pattern of black and white that changes little between summer and winter. They breed in loose colonies on bare ground beside water, lay three or four eggs in a scrape, and drive intruders off with loud calls and diving attacks.
  • Oystercatchers | Haematopodidae1 speciesA long, heavy, laterally flattened orange-red bill is the tool of this family: it is driven like a chisel between the shells of a bivalve or used like a hammer on the shell itself, and it wears down so fast in the work that it grows continuously. With it go short, sturdy legs with three toes, a red eye-ring, and a plumage that is either black and white or wholly black, alike in both sexes. Unlike almost all other waders, the chicks do not feed themselves: opening shellfish takes so much practice that the parents go on feeding them for months. The clutch is two or three eggs in a scrape, and the birds announce themselves in loud, piercing piping displays, small groups walking about with the neck drawn in and the bill pointed down.
  • Plovers and lapwings | Charadriidae17 speciesCompact birds with a large head, a short neck and a short bill thickened towards the tip — made for picking prey off the surface, not for probing into it. Black bands across breast and head break up the outline against bare ground, and many species tremble one foot on wet soil to bring worms to the surface. The clutch is almost always four pear-shaped eggs, points inwards in a scrape, and when danger comes the parents lure the intruder away with a feigned broken wing. Wing shape varies within the family: long and pointed in the species that migrate far, broad and rounded in the heavier ones, which gives them a slow, flapping flight.
• ▸Sandpipers and snipes | ScolopaciA long bill with pressure sensors in the tip: these birds locate their prey by touch, deep in mud or damp ground and without ever seeing it, so they feed as well in the dark as by day. The plumage is brown and finely streaked or mottled, and the eyes sit high and far back in the head, so that a probing bird keeps watch above and behind it. Care of the eggs is divided in strikingly different ways within the group: in a number of species the male incubates alone while the female lays in quick succession for several partners. Song in the ordinary sense is usually absent; over the breeding grounds they make sound with their tail or wing feathers, in display flights that can last all night.

  • Painted-snipes | Rostratulidae1 speciesSnipe-like marsh birds with a long bill that droops slightly at the tip and broad rounded wings that give a slow, owl-like flight. A wide pale spectacle runs round the eye and back past the ear coverts, and a pale brace crosses the shoulder, breaking the bird into pieces among the reeds. Here too the roles are reversed: the female is larger and richer in colour, with a warm chestnut neck, and it is her low repeated booming that carries over the marsh at dusk. She mates with several males, each of which incubates his own clutch and raises the young. They feed at half-light, probing the mud with the bill held slightly open, and when threatened rely first on standing still.
  • Sandpipers and snipes | Scolopacidae49 speciesThe bill is not only long and sensitive but mobile: the tip of the upper mandible alone can be raised, so the bird can seize a worm deep in the mud without opening the bill along its whole length. Length and curvature differ greatly from species to species, so that birds feeding side by side on the same flat reach different depths and different prey. The plumage is grey-brown and finely marked, and changes completely twice a year: a conspicuous breeding dress and a plain winter one. Four pear-shaped eggs in a scrape, chicks that find their own food from the first day, and outside the breeding season large flocks that wheel as one over the tidal flats.
• ▸Gulls, terns and auks | LariThese waders are not tied to the shoreline: they take their food from or below the water surface, rest afloat on the open sea and hang in the air for hours on long wings - some of them rowing underwater with those same wings. They breed in colonies on cliffs, islets and beaches, with a small clutch that is often no more than one or two eggs. The young stay at the nest and are fed by both parents, in some species long after they can fly; years then pass before they breed themselves, and in the meantime they wear a succession of immature plumages. Not everything in the group fits that picture: genetic evidence also places here a few small, secretive birds of grassland.

  • Buttonquails | Turnicidae1 speciesSmall, squat ground birds that look like quails but are not: they belong to the wader order, and the resemblance comes from doing the same work in the same grass. The hind toe is missing, leaving three toes pointing forward — hence the scientific name. The roles are reversed. The female is larger and more strongly marked, holds a territory and advertises with a deep, far-carrying boom produced with an inflated crop; she lays her eggs and moves on to the next mate. The male incubates alone, in a scrape under a tussock, and raises the young. They leave the nest at once and can flutter after a fortnight — sooner than almost any other bird. They fly rarely and briefly, low over the grass, and would rather be walked over than flushed.
  • Pratincoles and coursers | Glareolidae4 speciesA short, arched bill with a wide gape links two very different ways of living within one family: species that snatch insects out of the air on long pointed wings and a forked tail, and species that run on long legs over bare ground and pick up prey as they go. All of them belong to dry, open country — steppe, dried mud, sandy river banks — and the hind toe is small or absent. Two to four well-camouflaged eggs are laid on the bare ground without nesting material, in the aerial feeders often in colonies. The chicks are on their feet at once but are still fed by their parents for weeks.
  • Skuas | Stercorariidae4 speciesGull-like in shape, but with a heavier chest, a strongly hooked bill made up of separate horny plates with a fleshy cere over the base, and sharp, curved claws on webbed feet; females are larger than males. The plumage is brown or grey-brown, in several species with a pale and a dark morph side by side, and a white patch at the base of the primaries flashes in flight. They live largely on what other seabirds catch, forcing gulls and terns in long chases to give up their prey, and they also take eggs, chicks and carrion. They breed on open tundra and moorland, lay two eggs in a scrape and defend it with diving attacks; the rest of the year is spent at sea.
  • Auks | Alcidae6 speciesCompact, short-necked seabirds, dark above and white below, with small narrow wings used both for flying and for rowing underwater. That double duty is a compromise: wing loading is high, take-off is laboured and the flight is fast and whirring with continuous beats, while legs set far back leave them upright but awkward on land. They breed in colonies on cliff ledges, in burrows and in crevices, laying a single egg with no nest material — strongly pear-shaped in the species that use bare ledges. After breeding most species shed all their flight feathers at once and cannot fly for some weeks.
  • Gulls and terns | Laridae42 speciesThree fully webbed front toes and a small, raised hind toe: these birds can rest on the water, and salt glands above the eyes let them drink sea water as well. Two builds stand side by side within the family: heavier birds with a stout, slightly hooked bill that will eat almost anything they can get hold of, and slighter birds with a thin, pointed bill held downwards while hovering, before they drop into the water. They nest almost always in ground colonies, with one to three blotched eggs; the downy chicks stay at the nest and are fed by both parents, unlike the self-feeding young of the waders. Most species moult twice a year and show a different head pattern in winter, and in the largest species it takes two to four years before the adult plumage is complete.