Gould quoted an account by Robert Swinhoe of his discovery of this bird. 'On a journey from Mongolia to Peking, in the prefecture of Seuen-hwafoo, a tract of country enclosed by two portions of the Great Wall, we halted on the 26th September 1868 at a place called Kemeih, and climbed up the sides of a high mountain, on the top of which stood a monastery. We were in pursuit of the Rock-Partridge, when a party of red-tailed birds whisked past us and perching near, kept flying from rock to rock uttering loud cries... The bird proved to be an Accentor... distinguished by the chestnut colouring of its rump, upper tail-coverts and tail, and by its greyer head and neck.'
The birds are depicted lifesize.
R. Swinhoe, Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1870, pp.124-447, pl.IX
DISTRIBUTION: Palearctic from northwestern Africa and central and southern Europe east across Turkey, Iran, Caucasus, Transcaspia, Turkestan to southern Siberia, northern Korea and Japan and south through Mongolia and western, northern and central China to Himalayas of Tibet, northern Pakistan and northern India: also Taiwan. The birds illustrated here belong to the subspecies P.c. erythropygia which occurs in Altai, northern China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan