Dimdima
Online Children's Magazine from India
The Courser is a fairly long-legged bird that prefers to run rather than fly.
There are nine species of Courser worldwide. One of them, Jerdon's Courser, first recorded by Dr. Jerdon in the middle of the last century, was thought to have become extinct by 1900. Naturalists searched for it in its native habitat in eastern India but without success. In 1975/76 the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) launched another search for it. The BNHS circulated posters showing a coloured picture of the bird in the Pennar river valley in southern Andhra Pradesh. There was a note in Telugu accompanying the posters.
One day a tribal said he had seen the bird shown in the poster and that it was known as Kalivi-Kodi in Telugu. He said the birds moved in groups of seven to eight and fed at night.
This bit of information interested the scientists because one other species of courser was known to be nocturnal.
In January 1976 a poacher caught a Kalivi-Kodi but by the time a representative of the BNHS reached him the bird had died. But the scientists were closing in on the bird and soon afterwards they saw some of them in their natural surroundings. They watched entranced. Their long search was over!
The kalivi-kodi was indeed Jerdon's Courser and it was alive and well!
Last updated on :9/9/2003
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Dimdima is the Sanskrit word for ‘drumbeat’. In olden days, victory in battle was heralded by the beat of drums or any important news to be conveyed to the people used to be accompanied with drumbeats.
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Dimdima.com, the Children's Website of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan launched in 2000 and came out with a Printed version of Dimdima Magazine in 2004. At present the Printed Version have more than 35,000 subscribers from India and Abroad.