This large laughingthrush was previously illustrated by Elizabeth Gould in Gould's earliest volume, A Century of Birds from the Himalayan Mountains, but Gould placed further illustration in The Birds of Asia in order to show the difference between the Indian species and the Chinese bird Ianthocincla artemisiae in the following plate Asia III pl.45.
T.C. Jerdon described the birds as living in Nepal and Sikkim, in altitudes between 8,000 and 10,000 feet. They lived in flocks, and had 'a fine, loud, clear call, which when began by one, was immediately answered on all sides.' Elizabeth Gould's illustration, made over forty years earlier in June 1831, was of a single bird very delicately drawn and coloured, but stiffly placed on a sparsely leaved thick branch with no background. In Richter's composition the large bird has much the same pose, but the setting with two distant birds in a landscape is a more lively and realistic presentation.
The birds are depicted lifesize.
J. Gould, A Century of Birds from the Himalayan Mountains, 1830-33, pl.15, Cinclosoma ocellatum
T.C. Jerdon, Birds of India, 1862-64, II, part 1, p.41
DISTRIBUTION: Southern Asia: northern India, southeastern Tibet, northeastern Burma and central and southwestern China