Male: black above (marked with grey in winter); grey crown and lower back; rufous rump and sides of tail; black throat and breast; rufous below. Female: dull brown above; tail as in male; dull tawny-brown below. The eastern race rufiventris has a black crown, and is the common wintering bird of India. Mostly solitary in winter, when common all over India; easy bird to observe, in winter and in its open high-altitude summer country; perches on overhead wires, poles, rocks and stumps; characteristic shivering of tail and jerky body movements; makes short dashes to ground, soon returning to perch with catch; rather confiding insummer, breeding in houses, under roofs and in wall crevices.

Uniformly rufousbrown upperparts; black band through the eye with a white brow over it. Pale creamy underside with warmer rufous flanks; rufous tail. Wings brown without any white ‘mirror’. Female has faint scalloping on the underside. Solitary; keeps lookout from conspicuous perch or tree stump for prey on the ground, often returning to the same perch after hunting; territorial.

Sexes alike. Breeding adult: black plumage with metallic blue-green sheen; white facial skin and throat; bright yellow gular pouch and white thigh patches;  silky white plumes on head and neck. Non-breeding adult: no white thigh patches; gular pouch less bright. First year young: dull brown above, white below. Aquatic. Not a gregarious species outside breeding season; usually one or two birds feeding close by; dives underwater in search of fish.

Small raptor, similar in size to Shikra, but darker; adult male dark slate grey above, with more pronounced rufous-orange barring on underparts, barred tail, no mesial stripe, no contrasting wing-tips; in flight, barred underwing conspicuous; female darker grey-brown above, brown-barred below, with white supercilium; juvenile dark brown streaked with rufous above; racial variations; solitary, or in pairs; hunts like Shikra, though methods differ between sexes: male surprises small prey by swooping from cover, female larger prey in the open, after survey flight.