A basic understanding of habitat selection is necessary for conservation of rare endemic birds. The Emei Shan Liocichla (Liocichla omeiensis) is a rare babbler endemic to the mountains of southwest China. During three winters from 2010 to 2013, we conducted investigations on winter habitat characteristics of Emei Shan Liocichla at the Emei Mountain in Sichuan Province, China with line transect and sampling methods. 26 transects were set up along roads, ridges and trails, with a total length of 70 km. We found that Emei Shan Liocichla mainly inhabited the edges of evergreen broadleaf forest, with the elevations ranged from 500 m to 1 300 m. We established a total of 47 used samples and 25 control samples, respectively. χ² test showed that Emei Shan Liocichla preferred the sunny slope. The tests of differences of the variables between the used and control samples indicated that Emei Shan Liocichla used the habitats with less and lower trees, denser shrubs, herbs, bamboo and lianes, larger total cover of vegetation, and closer to the forest edge in lower altitude. The results of step discriminant analysis showed that cover of shrubs, cover of herbs, cover of bamboo and distance to forest edge were critical factors to discriminate the used and control samples, with the resolution reliability of 87.5%. We suggested that winter habitat selection by Emei Shan Liocichla be mainly related to food and concealment.