Shorebirds are one of the most fascinating, significant, and stunning groups of birds in the world. They are made up of a diverse group of species, which include plovers, oystercatchers, avocets, stilts, turnstones, sandpipers, yellowlegs, snipes, godwits, curlews, and phalaropes.
For beginning birders many species of shorebirds, especially the smaller sandpipers or Peeps, are at first confusingly similar as are some of the larger sandpipers. Shorebirds spend much of their time in wetland habitats and receive their name from the fact that they are often found along the shores of oceans, lakes, and other wet or marshy areas. Shorebirds have some of the longest migrations of all birds on earth often breeding in the Arctic and wintering in the extreme ends of the Southern hemisphere.
I am very fond of shorebirds as difficult as it may be to identify them at times.

While I don’t currently live by the ocean side as a Dutch born person the sea and seaside remains my spiritual home. I am always most comfortable next to large bodies of water. As I only came to photographing birds in recent years I have not had much opportunity to photograph seabirds, although I hope with time that this will change. Seabirds and Pelagic birds, also called oceanic birds and are birds that live on the open sea, or around the lands edge next to the sea. Pelagic birds spend the majority of their lives in the open ocean and only return to land to nest and rear their young.