A bird that looks exactly like the ground it stands on is easy to miss. The Indian Courser and the Indian Stone Curlew have spent millions of years perfecting that trick, and it has served them well against every predator evolution could throw at them. What it cannot protect them against is a shovel and a sapling.Both birds belong to a guild of species ecologists call open-country obligates: animals whose entire biology is calibrated for landscapes with no tree cover, thin or absent grass, and a clear line of sight in every direction. In India, that habitat is scrub desert, rocky plateau, fallow agricultural land, and the stony wastelands that most land-use planners still classify as degraded and in need of improvement. Planting trees on that land is not restoration. For these two birds, it is replacement.
