Bird Photography · The Indian List
Coursers and Pratincoles
3 of 7 species photographed
Seven species that split cleanly into two ways of living. The coursers are birds of dry open ground — dust, stubble, stony waste — that run in fast bursts and stop dead upright, closer in behaviour to a small plover than to anything most people picture as a wader. The pratincoles go the other way entirely: short-legged, long-winged, and spend the evening hawking insects in flight over open country and water margins, more like a large swallow than a wader on the ground.
Crab-Plover sits outside both patterns — a coastal specialist with a heavy black bill built for cracking crabs, found on a handful of stretches of Indian coast and nowhere inland. And Jerdon's Courser is the one name in this group that matters more than the rest combined: an Indian endemic thought extinct for most of the twentieth century, rediscovered in 1986, and now known from a single protected patch of scrub forest in Andhra Pradesh. It has not been reliably photographed by more than a handful of people alive.
The workable birds here are the commoner coursers and pratincoles, and the method is the same one that applies to any dry-ground bird: get down early, before the ground starts shimmering with heat, and let a bird that runs rather than flies come to a stop in front of you rather than trying to close the distance.
7Species in India
3Photographed
Dry ground and duskTwo ways of living
Jerdon's CourserThe one that matters most
Early lightHow to work them
The species
Jerdon's Courser
Not yet foundIndian Courser
Cursorius coromandelicus3 frames- Status
- Resident
- Range
- Widespread across the drier open country of the subcontinent, though local and easily missed
- Habitat
- Dry stubble, fallow, stony waste ground and short-grass plains — well away from water
- IUCN
- Least Concern
A bird that behaves like a small plover on land: runs in fast bursts, stops dead upright, runs again. Rufous crown, a bold white supercilium meeting in a V on the nape with a black line beneath it, and warm orange-buff underparts shading to a dark belly patch. Long pale legs and an upright carriage make it look taller than it is.
FM0083
Rollapadu Wildlife Sanctuary, Kurnool, Andhra PradeshHead down, feeding on close-cropped grass in low sun.
Cream-colored Courser
Not yet foundSmall Pratincole
Glareola lactea5 frames- Status
- Resident, moving locally as rivers rise and fall
- Range
- Widespread on the larger rivers and reservoirs of the subcontinent, absent from the far north-east and the high hills
- Habitat
- Sandbars, dried mud and stony margins of rivers and big tanks; feeds on the wing over open water at dusk
- IUCN
- Least Concern
The smallest of the pratincoles and the plainest — sandy-grey above, pale below, with none of the black throat necklace the larger species carry. The marks that do the work are the short black bill with a red base and the thin white crescent under the eye. On the ground it sits low and tight and is very easy to walk past; birds settle into a hollow and simply stop moving. In flight it becomes a different bird entirely, showing a clean white panel across the secondaries and a black underwing, hawking insects in loose flocks over water as the light goes.
FM0086
Himayat sagar lake, Ranga Reddy, TelanganaOn close-cropped grass, late April afternoon.
Collared Pratincole
Not yet foundOriental Pratincole
Glareola maldivarum2 frames- Status
- Breeding visitor to much of India, present mainly through the warmer months
- Range
- Across the plains of the subcontinent, tied to open ground near water
- Habitat
- Tank beds, fallow fields, dry mud and short grass close to wetlands; hunts insects on the wing at dusk
- IUCN
- Least Concern
A cream throat ringed by a thin black border, warm brown above, white belly, and a short forked tail. The bird to rule out is Collared Pratincole, and there are two things that do it. In flight, Collared shows a white trailing edge to the secondaries and Oriental does not — on the flight frame here that edge is plainly absent. At rest, Collared's tail projects well past the folded wingtips while Oriental's falls level or short. The underwing coverts are chestnut in both, so that mark settles nothing on its own.
FM0091
Osman Sagar, Hyderabad, TelanganaOverhead against clear sky, chestnut underwing coverts showing.
Photographs by Fareed Mohmed