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.

[2] 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.

[3] Latham in turn based his own description on a hand-coloured print that accompanied Comte de Buffon's Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux .

This species occurs in dry stony, scrubby or rocky country but rarely on sandy terrain[11] from the Indus valley east short of Bangladesh and south to the tip of Peninsular India.

They feed on insects mainly termites, beetles, crickets and grasshoppers picked up from the ground in stubbly or uncultivated fields.

[23] The chicks are protectively coloured and on alarm crouch and remain immobile making them extremely difficult to spot.

In parts of Gujarat, the species was very common in short-grass covered open and fallow lands but has vanished in many areas.