The hoopoe starling was in length. The bird's culmen was long, its wing , its tail , and its tarsus about long. It was the largest of the three Mascarene starlings. A presumed adult male (NHMUK 1889.5.30.15) in the Paris museum has a light ash-grey head and back of the neck (lighter on the hind-neck), with a long crest the same colour with white shafts. Its back and tail are ash-brown, its wings darker with a greyish wash, and its uppertail covert feathers and rump have a rufous wash. Its primary coverts are white with brown tips; the bases (instead of the tips) are brown in other specimens. The superciliary stripe, lore, and most of the specimen's underside is white, with a pale rufous wash on the flanks and undertail coverts. The extent of light rufous on the underside varies by specimen. The beak and legs are lemon-yellow, with yellow-brown claws. It has a bare, triangular area of skin around the eye, which may have been yellow in life. Though the species' iris was described as bluish-brown, it has been depicted as brown, yellow, or orange.