The Indian courser is on uncertain ground

Essentially a ground bird with dry open land as its habitat, this bird is directly impacted by development activities. Though considered ‘widespread’, it is checking out of many of its known habitats

When parents pop out of sight, an infant has trouble believing they have not disappeared forever. As it grows in days, the infant totters on to an understanding of “object permanence”, learning not to equate “popping out of sight” with “going out of existence”. The problem arises when infants that have grown into adults fail to unlearn the lesson of object permanence in certain situations. If something — and someone — keeps popping out of sight far too often, and pops back in only after a drearily long passage of time, it may actually be disappearing from the scene. Not with a bang, but with a series of inscrutable budges. Applying this logic to wildlife conservation, wildlife ecologists can sometimes get overly optimistic about a species’ resilience, believing it exists in the same encouraging numbers, ignoring growing evidence that it is checking out of many of its known habitats. Talking of a specific case, there is evidence that it is time to such shed misplaced optimism about the Indian courser (cursorius coromandelicus).