Male, dark brown above. Forehead, face and underparts white. Female, duller in coloring than the male. The white is limited to the lower breast and belly. Other underline shows greyish-brown.

Adult male: The forehead is clean white. The top of the head and nape are blue-grey grading to ashy chocolate-brown on the back of the neck and pale grey on side of the neck. The face is white except for a small black postocular spot on the ear-coverts connected to grey on sides of the neck. The mantle, scapulars, tertials, secondaries, inner and outer wing-coverts, back, rump and uppertail-coverts are all ashy chocolate-brown. The inner two tertials and inner two greater wing coverts have large dark purplish subterminal spots. The rump is a marginally paler, ashy, chocolate-brown edged by two darker brown bars. The inner rectrices are dark chocolate-brown with a blackish terminal third. The outer pair of tail feathers is grey with a black terminal bar and greyish tip. The undertail is dark brown. The primary wing-coverts, primaries and secondaries all show chestnut bases on the inner webs with brown tips and some chestnut edging on the outer web of the inner primaries. The extent of the chestnut progressively reduces on the inner secondaries. The under-wing is chestnut. The chin, throat and breast are clean white. The flanks and undertail-coverts are dull brown. The iris is blackish-brown. Orbital skin forms a very narrow purplish-red eye-ring. The bill is deep purple with a dark tip. Feet are purplish-red.

Adult female: Generally duller, the white on the female is limited to the lower breast and belly. Otherwise, female is pale greyish-brown below and above very similar to the male. The forhead and top of the head are greyish-brown with no hint of bluish-grey. The bare part may be slightly duller.

Juvenile: Generally like a female but with chestnut fringing and dark brown subterminal bars, to greater or lesser extent depending upon age, to the feathers of the breasts, flanks, hindcrown and mantle. The wing-coverts and tertials show this to more marked extent.

Other Names:

Sub-Saharan Africa from Sierra Leone and S. Ethiopia south to E. South Africa. Also Comoro Islands. A wide variety of forested and otherwise thickly vegetated habitats, including primary and secondary montane, lowland and riparian forests, and thickly planted gardens and plantations.

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