The nests of this species are large, loosely constructed cups, much resembling those of its Himalayan congeners.  The base and sides consist chiefly of dry bamboo-leaves with a few dead tree-leaves scantily held together by a few creepers, while the interior portion of the nest, which has no separate lining, is composed of fine twigs and stems of herbaceous plants and the slender flower-stems of trees which bear their flowers in clusters.  The nests vary a good deal in exterior dimensions as the materials straggle far and wide in some cases, and the external diameter may be said to vary from 6 to 8 inches, and the height from 3.25 to 4.5; the cavities are more uniform in size, and are about 3.5 in diameter by 2 in depth.

The eggs are moderately broad ovals, at times somewhat pointed perhaps towards the small end, pure white and fairly glossy.

Major C.T.  Bingham thus writes of this bird:—­“It is very difficult to either watch these birds, unseen yourself, at one of their dancing parties, or to catch one of them actually sitting on the nest.  Twice had I in the end of March this year come across nests with one or two of these birds in the vicinity, and yet have had to leave the eggs in them as uncertain to what bird they belonged.  At last, on the 2nd April, I came in for a piece of luck.  I was roaming about in the vicinity of my camp on the Gawbechoung, the main source of the Thoungyeen river, and moving very slowly and silently amid the dense clumps of bamboo, when my ears were saluted by the hearty laughter of a flock of these birds, evidently not far off.  Very quietly I crept up, and looking cautiously from behind a thick bamboo-clump, saw ten or twelve of them going through a most intricate dance, flirting their wings and tails, and every now and then bursting into a chorus of shouts, joined in by a few others who were seated looking on from neighbouring bushes.  During one of the pauses of the applause, and while the dancers were busy twining in and out, a single rather squeaky ‘bravo’ came from a bamboo-bush right opposite to me.  Looking up I was astonished to see a nest in a fork of the bamboo, and on the nest a Garrulax who, probably too busy with her maternal duties to watch the performance going on below her attentively, came in with a solitary shout of approbation at an unseemly time.  I watched the performance a few minutes longer, and then frightened the old hen on the nest.  The terrific scare I caused by my sudden appearance is beyond description.  The dancers scattered with screeches, and the old hen dropped fainting over the side of her nest with a feeble remonstrance, and disappeared in the most mysterious way.  After all the nest contained only one egg, very glossy, white, and fresh.  The nest was better and stronger built, though very like that of Garrulax moniliger, constructed of twigs, and finely lined with black hair-like roots; it measured some 6 inches in diameter, the egg-cavity about 11/2 inch deep.  Subsequently I took three other nests, on the 4th April and 23rd May.  The first contained three, the two latter three and four eggs respectively.  A considerable number of eggs measure from 1.22 to 1.06 in length, and from .92 to .81 in breadth, and average 1.13 by 0.88.”