Shorebirds
| Shorebirds: Charadriiformes Gulls and Terns Black Tern Least Tern Royal Tern Sandwich Tern Forster's Tern Heermann's Gull Herring Gull Laughing Gull Lesser Black-backed Gull Ring-billed Gull Thayer's Gull Black Skimmer Oystercatchers: Family Haematopodidae American Oystercatcher Black Oystercatcher Plovers: Family Charadriidae Black-bellied Plover Killdeer Mountain Plover Piping Plover Semipalmated Plover Snowy Plover Wilson's Plover Sandpipers: Family: Scolopacidae Black Turnstone Ruddy Turnstone Dunlin Greater Yellowlegs Lesser Yellowlegs Long-billed Curlew Long-billed Dowitcher Short-billed Dowitcher Least Sandpiper Marbled Godwit Pectoral Sandpiper Red-necked Phalarope Sanderling Spotted Sandpiper Surfbird Western Sandpiper Whimbrel Willet Wilson's Phalarope Stilts: Family Recurvirostridae American Avocet Black-necked Stilt |
Most, if not all, are migratory species that can can be found along coastal areas and inland wetland areas of the United States during spring and fall migration.
Some, such as the Whimbrel, rank among the world's great flyers, traveling to and from their summer breeding grounds in the Arctic to their wintering grounds in the Southern Hemisphere.
Finding them can be as easy as spying the small, medium and large birds wading close to shore and poking their bills into the ground in search of food.
Sandpipers (family Scolopacidae), the largest family in terms of number of species, consists of over twenty genera and ninety different species. Other Charadriiformes families like the stilts are small, consisting of one or two species.
There is little history of sport hunting for many of the species, and consequently many are easily approached and amenable to getting their picture taken. Being approachable also allows many a casual birder to easily study their behavior in a natural setting.
In some shorebird cases, as with many gulls, their taste for human food, makes it practically impossible to keep them at arm's length at beach side or at the other human centered locations where they tend to congregate.
Despite the absence of sport hunting, many shorebird populations are declining, primarily because their preferred habitat, shorelines, are also the preferred habitat of humans.
A group of governmental and nongovernmental organizations surveyed the native shorebird population and released an action plan to help stabilize their population declines. A 2004 re-evaluation listed seven species as highly imperiled:
- Piping Plover
- Mountain Plover
- Snowy Plover
- Buff-breasted Sandpiper (North American populations)
- Black-necked Stilt (Hawaiian population)
- Long-billed Curlew
- Red Knot (Canadian Arctic-Atlantic Coast population)
The links listed on the right take you to pictures and descriptions of most of the imperiled species, along with more than half of all native shorebird species.
© 2009 Patricia A. Michaels