In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the black-crowned tchagra in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Senegal.

He used the French name La pie-griesche gris du Sénégal and the Latin Lanius Senegalensis cinereus.

[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

[3] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.

Black-crowned tchagra lays two or three heavily marked white eggs in a cup nest in a tree or bush.