Its natural habitat is bamboo thickets within coniferous forest at altitudes of 3000–3,400 metres.

The species was discovered in 1891, but for the next 120 years only a handful of individuals were seen and to date no female has been conclusively identified.

[2] In June 2011 a team of scientists discovered its breeding grounds in the Qinling Mountains, Shaanxi Province, north central China.

Seven singing males were seen in Foping and a further seven in Changqing Nature Reserves- almost equal to the total number seen previously.

[4] The first formal description of the blackthroat was by the Russian ornithologists Valentin Bianchi and Mikhail Berezovski in 1891 who coined the binomial name Larvivora obscura.