Scolopacidae is a large family of shorebirds, or waders, which mainly includes many species known as sandpipers, but also others such as woodcocks, curlews and snipes.

Different lengths of bills enable multiple species to feed in the same habitat, particularly on the coast, without direct competition for food.

They generally have dull plumage, with cryptic brown, grey, or streaked patterns, although some display brighter colours during the breeding season.

Paractitis has been named from the Early Oligocene of Saskatchewan (Canada), while Mirolia is known from the Middle Miocene at Deiningen in the Nördlinger Ries (Germany).

Most living genera would seem to have evolved throughout the Oligocene to Miocene with the waders perhaps a bit later; see the genus accounts for the fossil record.

Compared to the other large family of wading birds, the plovers (Charadriidae), they tend to have smaller eyes, more slender heads, and longer thinner bills.

It has been hypothesized this helps when probing by allowing the bill to be partly opened with less force and improving manipulation of prey items in the substrate.

[10] The sandpipers have a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring across most of the world's land surfaces except for Antarctica and the driest deserts.

The final method, employed by the phalaropes and some Calidris sandpipers, involves pecking at the water for small prey.

Sandpipers lay three or four eggs into the nest, which is usually a vague depression or scrape in the open ground, scarcely lined with soft vegetation.