The Orange-headed Thrush has an orange head and underparts, with plain gray or brown upperparts. Facial markings vary among subspecies; in Singapore it searches wooded ground for insects and also eats fruit.
The head and underparts are orange, while the upperparts are plain gray or brown. Subspecies recorded in Singapore differ in facial pattern: some have faint brown markings and a white wingbar, some lack both, and rarer eastern birds can have stronger facial stripes.
Orange-headed Thrushes breed in the Himalayan foothills and reach elevations of about 1,600 metres. In winter, they move south into peninsular India and Sri Lanka. Their broad range extends from northern Pakistan and India through eastern and southeastern China, and across islands including the Andamans, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and Bali.
A bird survey recorded one Orange-headed Thrush at Shekha Wetland in Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh, on 8 February 2020. The authors described the species as rarely recorded in Uttar Pradesh and said this observation added it to the district bird list. Shekha Wetland is identified in the article as an Important Bird Area.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Shekha Wetland is identified as an Important Bird Area, and the 2020 sighting added Orange-headed Thrush to the Aligarh district bird list. The authors describe the species as rarely recorded in Uttar Pradesh, so the observation adds a local occurrence record from a wetland site.