Indian Courser

About the Indian Courser

The Indian courser (Cursorius coromandelicus) is a species of courser found in mainland South Asia, mainly in the plains bounded by the Ganges and Indus river system. Like other coursers, it is a ground bird that can be found in small groups as they forage for insects in dry open semi-desert country.

The Indian courser was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the plovers in the genus Charadrius and coined the binomial name Charadrius coromandelicus. Gmelin based his description on the "Coromandel plover" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham in turn based his own description on a hand-coloured print that accompanied Comte de Buffon's Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The Indian courser is now placed in the genus Cursorius that was introduced by Latham in 1790. The genus name is from Latin cursor meaning "runner", from currere, "to run". The specific epithet is from the Coromandel Coast of India, the type locality. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised... Wikipedia →