Criteria for Ageing and Sexing Waders:

Male, female, juvenile, immature and adult waders may differ in many aspects of their life, such as habitat selec tion, behaviour, migration distance, timing and strategy. Therefore the ability to determine the age and sex of live birds accurately is often of crucial importance in wader research. The BTO’s Guide to the identification and ageing of Holarctic waders written by Tony Prater, John Marchant and Juhani Vuorinen published in 1977 was a milestone for wader researchers. It is still in print and widely used, but after 30 years many new methods for determining age and sex have been discovered. Hence there is an urgent need to review existing knowledge and summarise what we know species by species. More over, growing interest in the waders that inhabit the Southern Hemisphere, as well as lesser known species, suggests that the scope of a new account needs to be broader. The plan is to publish a series of short articles in th