[1] This small passerine bird is common in clearings and open mountain bushlands there up to 2600 metres above sea level, including in the plains around Piton de la Fournaise.

[2] The Réunion stonechat was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[4] The Réunion stonechat is now placed in the genus Saxicola that was introduced in 1802 by the German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein.

[5] The scientific name is from Saxicola, "rock-dweller", from Latin saxum, a rock + incola, dwelling in; and tectes, onomatopoetic Neo-Latin after the species' call, from the Réunion Creole name tec-tec.

Females differ from males in being browner above, more buff-toned below, and often lacking the white greater covert patch.