Females have a greyish head, lack the white stripe and have the upperparts and wings with greens, yellow and chestnut.

The inner edges and tips of the primaries are white, the tertiaries (the three inner secondaries[1]) are uniformly[2] orange-chestnut, unlike dark chestnut in P. a.

[7] Temminck described a similar and related species from Java in 1835 as Allotrius flaviscapis and this too was moved to the genus Pteruthius.

[9] In 2008, a study of the Pteruthius group found that the relationships within the groups here were more complex than earlier thought and one of the findings was that the subspecies validirostris of the eastern Himalayas was more closely related to the forms found further to the east in Southeast Asia and far more distant to the form in the western Himalayas.

The eastern limits of the species are unclear but some evidence based on song differences suggests that they might occur as far east as Arunachal Pradesh.

This might be negated if it is found that song variations exist within the eastern form Pteruthius aeralatus validirostris of Blyth's shrike-babbler.

The call being a series of loud kewkew kwekew repeated three or four times and the song from February to June transcribed as cha-chew, cha-ca-chip.

The nest is a hammock, like that of an oriole, built in a fork towards the tip of a branch high in the canopy of a tree.

The clutch varies from two to four eggs which are pinkish white and speckled in purple brown, the spots merging to form a ring towards the broad end.