The male is a shiny blue-black on upperparts, head and upper breast, with mostly white below and bloodred eyes.

Exceptional young birds are entirely white below, including chin and throat.

The call is a prolonged soft babbling quereeeh quaaa kereek quak-quak, suaaaa, cherak-chik-chak...mixed higher harsh notes.

It is a gregarious nomadic pied starling of dry brush and thorn-scrub in northern and eastern Kenya.

It is also found in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.