Captain Hutton says that this species is "common from 3500 feet up to 10,000 or 12,000 feet, always in pairs, turning up the dead leaves on copsewood covered banks, uttering a loud whistle, answering and calling each other. It breeds in April, constructing its nest on the ground of coarse dry grasses and leaf-stalks of walnut-trees, and is covered with a dome-shaped roof, so nicely blended with the fallen leaves and withered grasses, among which it is placed, as to be almost undistinguishable from them. The eggs are three in number, and pure white; diameter 1·12 by 0·81 inches, of an ordinary oval shape. When disturbed, the bird sprung along the ground with long bounding hops, so quickly that, from its motions and the appearance of the nest, I was led to believe it a species of rat. The nest is placed in a slight hollow, probably formed by the bird itself." According to Mr. Hodgson's notes, this species would appear to breed at heights of from 2000 to 8000 feet. It lays in May and June. On the 20th May, and again on the 6th June, Mr. Hodgson found nests of this species in thick bushes 3 or 4 feet above the ground. They were broad saucer-shaped nests of coarse vegetable fibres, grass, and grass-roots, 7 inches or so in diameter, and the cavity, which had no lining, was about 4 inches in diameter by 2 inches in depth. They contained three and four white eggs respectively. One figured measures 0·98 by 0·73. On June 8th he found two more nests at Jaha Powah, on the ground, on edges of brushy slopes close to grassy open plains, the nest a large mass of grass, oven-shaped, open at one and in one case at both ends, protected by the root of a tree. There were two and three white eggs in the nests respectively. The eggs of these nests are figured as measuring 1·08 by 0·73. Mr. Gammie remarks:--"I found a nest of this species below Rungbee, at an elevation of about 2000 feet, on the 17th June. It was placed on, and partially in a hole in a bank, and contained two hard-set eggs. It was a large, loose pad of fine grass and dead fern, with a few broad flag-like grass-leaves incorporated towards the base, and overhung by a sort of canopy of similar materials. The basal portion was some 6 inches long and 5 inches broad, and about 2 inches thick in the thickest part, with a broad shallow depression for the eggs of about half that depth."