Wader Directory
The term ‘wader’ is synonymous with ‘shorebird’; both are used to refer to the same group of birds.
In scientific terms, waders referred to species in the order CHARADRIIFORMES. This included all the species in the suborders CHARADRII and SCOLOPACI and two families within LARI; Dromadidae – Crab Plover and Glareolidae – pratincoles and coursers. (But not the families Turnicidae – buttonquails, Laridae – gulls, terns, noddies and skimmers, Stercorariidae – skuas and Alcidae – auks also within the suborder LARI.)
Order
- CHARADRIIFORMES Huxley 1867 – comprises; CHARADRII, SCOLOPACI and LARI.
Sub-orders
- CHARADRII Huxley 1867 – plovers, thick-knees, oystercatchers, avocets.
- SCOLOPACI Stauch 1978 – jacanas, sandpipers, snipes.
- LARI Sharpe 1891 – Crab Plover, pratincoles, coursers, (also; buttonquails, gulls, terns, skimmers, skuas, auks – not included on this website).
In 2025 a new worldwide taxonomy was been published, called AviList: A Unified Global Checklist of the World’s Birds. This was a collaboration between a number of the main ornithological authorities to agree a universal world list of birds species.
This list, at least for now, does not break orders into sub-orders, allowing us to include whatever we wish to consider wader species, free from the constriction of trying to fit into scientific boxes. Hence what you see here in the Wader Directory are the species contained within the seminal book on waders Shorebirds (Hayman, Marchant & Prater) plus Plains Wanderer and the Sheathbills. We do however now follow the scientific findings of Avilist regarding species/subspecies status.
Click on the picture to read more about each family.
