Sri Lanka Scimitar-babble is an uncommon endemic bird inhabiting forests and well wooded areas as well as the adjoining scrubs and home gardens throughout the country though rather rare in the dry lowlands. It lives as pairs or as family parties and often associates with feeding flocks consisting of other birds and travel through the forest in search of its insect prey in bark crevices, moss covered tree trunks, dead leaves etc. It breeds from March to May and again at the end of the year. The nest is a closed globular with a side entrance made out of grass blades, dead leaves, twigs and fibers, placed among dense herbage, ferns, etc. close to the ground or sometimes in a tree cavity or a deep fork. It lays two or three white eggs in it.
Two races occurs. Race
melanurus peculiar to the low country wet zone and south-western hills while race
horsfieldii found in dry lowlands and hills.
