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Wader size guide

Field guides draw every bird to fill its own box, so a dunlin and a curlew look much the same size on the page. They are not. This chart puts nine common waders on one scale, using published species-average weights.

Curlew is about 15.5 times Dunlin at the same measure. Weights are species averages and wing lengths are measured on the unflattened wing, both from AVONET (Tobias et al. 2022, CC BY 4.0). Each species page links to its Avibase record.

Wader	Average weight	Wing length	Scientific name
Curlew	803 g	292.2 mm	Numenius arquata
Oystercatcher	526 g	250.3 mm	Haematopus ostralegus
Avocet	304 g	217.9 mm	Recurvirostra avosetta
Bar-tailed Godwit	291.6 g	210.1 mm	Limosa lapponica
Lapwing	218.4 g	222.5 mm	Vanellus vanellus
Turnstone	136 g	148.8 mm	Arenaria interpres
Redshank	129 g	156.9 mm	Tringa totanus
Snipe	112.9 g	127.9 mm	Gallinago gallinago
Dunlin	51.9 g	115.1 mm	Calidris alpina

Data: AVONET, Tobias et al. (2022) Ecology Letters 25:581-597, doi:10.1111/ele.13898, CC BY 4.0. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Changes: Species averages rounded to one decimal place and shown to scale. Checked 2026-09-16.

Every wader in detail

Commonly confused

Two waders people often mix up, and the measurements that separate them.

Waders, Weighed

Nine common waders on one scale, by published species-average body mass.

The chart on this page, printed properly.

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