Abstract and SummaryObservations on lapwing foraging on estuarine mudflats showed that:1They detected prey during stationary scanning pauses.2The majority of prey items were taken within three paces of the scanning position; the polychaeteNereis diversicolorwas taken at greater distances than the amphipodCorophium volutator.3Pecks that proved abortive occurred after a greater number of paces than successful pecks, and their proportionate incidence increased with distance from the pause position; it is argued that aborted pecks are due to misidentification of prey cues rather than escape of the prey.4After failing to detect prey from one position, birds gave up and moved to a new scanning position; the median distance moved corresponded to the radius of an area within which 99% of prey items were located.5The total distance moved while taking prey (including steps taken after capture but before the next scanning pause) rarely took birds beyond the boundary of the previously scanned area; birds that chose to remain in the previous scanning position had higher subsequent probabilities of taking prey than those that moved to scan a fresh area.6There was a negative correlation between success rate (proportion of pauses that resulted in prey capture) and rate of movement (steps per min); this was caused by increased distances moved between pauses in low quality foraging areas, and not by handling times interfering with searching, as there was a positive correlation between the number of prey handled per min and searching rate (number of pauses per min).