Charadriiformes forms quite a very wide order that has small, medium to large fowls. This order has around 350 bird species with its members evenly distributed across the whole world. A good number of the Charadriiformes inhabit areas nearer water bodies, where they feed on invertebrates and other smaller animals. Nonetheless, there are some of these birds that are pelagic or sea birds and do occupy desert regions and a couple of them can be found around thicker forested areas.

Evolution

The fossil records have shed some light on Charadriiformes and depicted that they are also an ancient bird group. In fact, some of the Neornithes cases of fossil record that is featured around the event of the Cretaceous-Tertiary kind of extinction have given this evidence, through the many pieces and bits of birds resembling the birds that make up this order. For so many of these birds, the reason for the belief is largely because of the convergent evolution that was brought along by the habits of semi-aquatic nature that took place about 30 to 35 Million Years Ago.

Within the Charadriiformes order, it is largely made of birds from small, medium to large sized birds, some being winged, endothermic, bipedal kind of vertebrates that do lay eggs. In the world today you can find more than 10,000 species in existence, a feature that has made them generally the most numerous vertebrates of the tetrapod type. They occur within ecosystems around the world, all the way from Antarctic to the Arctic region. These birds range include also the Bee Hummingbird and others.

Geographical Distribution

The Charadriiformes also include the terns and Gulls, where they have global distribution. The skimmers are tropical as well as temperate, while other such as the jaegers and skuas range from being polar-gull to temperate.

The terns and gulls are generally the most familiar birds found across many coastal regions of the world today. Most skimmers have been restricted to riverine and coastal habitats in such areas a Africa, South America and Asia. On the other hand the Skuas are also polar and temperate. As much as many of these species do nest mostly along many coastal areas along cliffs and beaches, others do nest within marshes, long the tundra and Inside Rivers and inland lakes. In the case of the skimmers found in Asia they range from Southern Asia, Cambodia to Pakistan. Those Charadriiformes in Africa also breed within rivers found in Africa.

Habitat

The most habitual habitats for these birds include the sub-Antarctic Islands and the Arctic, within inland rivers, sea-coastal areas to deserts and marshes. There is a preferential variation in the Charadriiformes habitat, as much as most of them do nest and feed in areas that are associated with water. For the gulls they feed and nest over a vast habitat range, while terns definitely forage over seas and oceans. This term foraging constraint does limit them somewhat their own nesting distribution. Terns and gulls nest on the ground in such places as offshore Islands and coastal areas, areas that predators cannot access.