It prefers the low bushes at the edge of the southern Tibetan plateau,[2] but it can adapt to both dry and cold mountain habitats.

[3] It mainly nests in willows (Salix longistamina), Rosa sericea, Populus szechuanica, Cotoneaster microphyllus, and elm trees.

[3] It prefers to nest in areas dense with trees, close to water but far from human settlements.

[3] The giant babax was described by the English ornithologist Henry Dresser in 1905 from a specimen collected by the British explorer Laurence Waddell in the Yarlung Tsangpo river valley in Tibet.

[4] Based on the results of a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study of the Leiothrichidae that was published in 2018, the giant babax was placed in the resurrected genus Pterorhinus.