Found in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines, it lives in subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest.

The upper parts are a mixture of brown, grey, buff and white, spotted with black.

Female birds are rather tawnier and brighter than males, and juveniles are similar to the adults but paler and duller.

It feeds on such insects as butterflies and moths, ants, grasshoppers, cicadas, beetles, earwigs, cockroaches, caterpillars and small molluscs.

[2] The nest is built on a low, level branch about 4.5 cm (1.8 in) in diameter and is a very shallow cup made of moss, downy feathers and bark fragments.