Hi Lynda,
Sorry to be trite but how precise or exclusive do you wish your classification to be? Or are you just looking for a rough description? I suppose it comes down to the word “predominantly”. You appear to be already aware that it is not so clear cut and then there is the habitat called estuarine or tidal. Many birds will be two out of three of these, e.g. swans & pelicans are regularly aquatic and marine. The opinion of people may vary according to where they spend most time looking for birds.
Are you only considering water birds & wading birds or also things like Sea-Eagle, Osprey, Brahminy Kite, which unlike most hawks are predominantly associated with water in some form. So for some families I think you need to consider each species, not by family. But if you are considering all birds you could probably block all parrots, honeyeaters, grass wrens, finches and many groups as terrestrial.
Even then there is the occasional weird one, such as Canberra has one record each of 3 marine species: White-faced Storm Petrel, Short-tailed Shearwater & Long-tailed Jaeger.
Philip
Perhaps there is a room for “Littoral”
Carl Clifford ===============================
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I would take it further – Black Swans are often seen on wet grasslands! Guess it depends on why you want to do this Lynda – personally I would not place waders as aquatic birds as – whilst most are found on shorelines – they do not actually go in the water much! ANd many ducks, cormorants etc are just as much at home on “marine” (by which I take it you mean saline) as “aquatic” (fresh?) environments – indeed cormorants are predominantly marine. And as Philip points out it depends on the species not the family – some ducks are marine, some aquatic and some terrestrial!
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