There are three major families of shorebirds: 1  Waders, about 220 species, include sandpipers, lapwings, snipes, plovers, stilts and various other species. These birds inhabit coasts and shorelines, as well as other open habitats. 2  Gulls, terns, skuas, jaegers and skimmers form a group of a little over 100 species.
The compass was probably invented in the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC) by Chinese fortune-tellers who used the lodestones to construct their fortune telling boards.
Some speculate that in 101 BCE Chinese ships reached the east coast of India for the first time with help from the navigational compass pioneered by the Chinese. They had discovered the orientating effect of magnetite, or lodestone as early as the 4th century BCE.