Orange-brown with black-and-white wing panels and a speckled white “beard” extending down the throat and up to either cheek. Inhabits high-elevation montane forests in the eastern Himalayas, where it usually forages in flocks in dense lower vegetation and in bamboo stands. Listen for its song, a pair or trio of high thin notes followed by a rapid-fire machine-gun rattle. Calls sound like broken-apart components of the song.