We discovered this beautiful bird in the protected zone of the Wilderness Orchard and botanical gardens in Uttarakhand.

The female has olive-brown upperparts, greyer crown and nape, a buffy eyering around large black eyes, rufous wings with white streaking, rufous tail. The underparts are greyish-olive, the throat is buffy and there is a small but very noticeable incomplete white neck band in the middle of the neck with a tiny iridescent blue at each end.

The rufous-bellied niltava lives in the brushy undergrowth in a variety of moist and tropical forest types, including mixed, broadleafed, secondary and disturbed lowland montane forests throughout the Himalayas. The bird ranges from central China through Myanmar (Burma) and into northern Thailand and Indochina.

As typical for its family, this species is mainly insectivorous and it also consumes fruit. This species constructs an open cup nest hidden in dense vegetation. The hen lays 3-4 eggs per clutch, which she incubates alone, and both parents feed and care for the chicks. Young birds are primarily fed insects.

The male gets his brilliant colouring from a combination of pigments and structural colours. The orange underparts come from pigment-based colouring, created by a group of pigments known as carotenoids. The carotenoids are produced by plants, and are acquired by eating plants and storing the pigments until moult, at which time the carotenoids are placed inside the growing feathers.

Blue is a combination of structural colouring and pigment-based colouring. The rich dark blue of the bird's upperparts is the result of tiny air pockets inside the feather barbs that scatter incoming light, creating the blue colouring. The feather itself contains pigments -- melanins -- that strengthen the feather structure and deepen the blue colouring. When you see this bird in low light or when it is backlit, the blue colouring resulting from light scattering is lost, so the bird will look black-and-orange instead of b