It is a familiar bird of countryside and open scrub or grassland where it is found perched at the top of short thorn trees or other shrubs, looking out for insect prey.

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the pied bush chat in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected from the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

[3] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.

Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Motacilla caprata and cited Brisson's work.

[7] At 13 cm (5.1 in), the pied bush chat is slightly smaller than the Siberian stonechat, Saxicola maurus, although it has a similar dumpy structure and upright stance.

[14] Local names include Kala pidda in Hindi Shyama in Gujarati Kavda gapidda in Marathi Kallu kuruvi in Tamil, Kampa nalanchi in Telugu.

[18] The pied bush chat is a resident breeder in tropical southern Asia from the Greater Middle East through the Indian subcontinent eastwards to Indonesia.

The nest is built in a hole in a wall or similar site lined with grass and hair, and two to five eggs are laid.

Males display during the breeding season by splaying the tail, fluttering and puffing up the white scapular feathers.

[30][31] Adult birds have few predators although bats (Megaderma lyra)[32][33] and wintering Asio flammeus have been noted[34] to prey on them.

The Kotas of the Nilgiris have an origin story to explain the sexual dimorphism of the pied bushchat but they consider the "karyvaky" bird to be one that foretells good omen.