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.
Compass. The fourth of the Great Inventions is the magnetic compass. Whilst mining for ores and producing copper and iron by smelting, the Chinese came upon a natural mineral, magnetite, which attracted iron, and also always pointed north if suspended. With development the round compass came into being.