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.
Middle Ages History. The Chinese provide the first documented use of suspended lodestones used as a compass. In 1088 Shen Kuo described the magnetic needle compass, which could be used for navigation in his Dream Pool Essays. The first recorded use was documented by Zheng He of the Yunnan province.