[5] This can appear somewhat like the male of the syntopic white-bellied blue flycatcher (Cyornis pallipes) but can be distinguished by behaviour apart from the longer legs and greyer colouration.

[5] This genus placement was carried on in the second edition of The Fauna of British India (1924) by E. C. Stuart Baker[8] but was demoted into a subspecies on the basis of a specimen collected by T. F. Bourdillon at Mynal which was claimed to be intermediate to the two forms.

[9] This treatment as subspecies was carried forward by Salim Ali and Sidney Dillon Ripley in their "Handbook"[10][11] until the old two species were restored by P C Rasmussen in 2005.

[12] In the Birds of South Asia (2005), however they moved the species tentatively into the genus Myiomela based on morphological similarities and pointed out that the placement in Brachypteryx was in error.

[3] In 2010, DNA sequence studies suggested an ancient divergence in these two populations and confirmed their elevation to full species.

[15] The genus position was however not settled until 2017 and it was found based on a larger sampling that the species from southern India formed a group that is sister to the flycatchers in the genera Eumyias, Cyanoptila, Niltava, Cyornis and Anthipes.

[16][17] The natural habitat of the white-bellied blue robin is forest patches in the valleys of high altitude grasslands known as sholas.

[3][20] Two greyish green and brown-marked eggs are laid during the breeding season that varies from April to June, after the rains.