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.
As for the compass usage in navigation, Shen Kua mentioned it in his bookâDream Pool Essaysâ in 1086. There were other recorded Chinese usage of the compass for navigation in 1124, 1126. However Needham thought the compass was first used for navigation in the period from 850â1050. This is about a century before the compass was mentioned by Alexander Neckam in âDe Naturis Rerumâ in 1190. The compass did not reach Europe by way of the Arabs.