EBird describes the bird as "A spectacular medium-sized kingfisher of foothill and montane forest on Mindanao with a thick red bill, a white throat, a blue rump, and faintly scaled rufous on the underparts and cheek, extending around the back of the neck.

Song, given at dawn, consists of a single downslurred whistle with a slightly metallic quality, “wee-ooo,” repeated every few seconds.

The birds from East Mindanao were once described as the subspecies burtoni are poorly differentiated.

This species perches in the lower storeys and flies to the ground to catch its prey.

[4] Its natural habitats are on the upper ranges of tropical moist lowland forest and tropical moist montane forests having a wide altitude range of 100 -2,400 meters above sea level but with majority of records are above 1,000 masl.

This species appears to show a preference for montane habitats which are most at risk from mining activities especially for chromite and nickel.