They tend toward dull grays and browns in their appearance, though a few are black or blue-gray, and many have red, yellow, or white irises.

[3] They have long, strong legs (for passerines) with which many species hop through undergrowth searching for arthropods and fruits to eat.

They usually lay 2 to 5 eggs that hatch in 12 or 13 days, which is also the length of time the chicks stay in the nest.

[5][6] These and oxpeckers (and the Philippine creepers if they are not outright but highly apomorphic starlings) form a group of Muscicapoidea which originated probably in the Early Miocene – very roughly 25–20 mya[7] – somewhere in East Asia.

[5] This makes the expanded Sturnidae a rather noninformative group and is probably due to the methodological drawbacks of their DNA-DNA hybridization technique.