It is small and ashy brown with a dark cheek patch and a broad white brow.

It is found across Asia mainly in thin forest and scrub habitats where they hunt insects, often joining other insectivorous birds.

The common woodshrike was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[2][3] Gmelin based his description on the "Le gobe-mouches de Pondichéry" that had been described in 1782 by the French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat.

[5] The common woodshrike is now one of four species placed in the genus Tephrodornis that was introduced in 1832 by the English naturalist William Swainson.

They feed on mainly on insects and sometimes berries by gleaning mostly along branches and leaves within trees but sometimes also make aerial sallies or descend to the ground.

[15] A spirurid nematode Oxyspirura alii was described and named after S. Mehdi Ali and obtained from within the eye cavity of a common woodshrike specimen from Hyderabad.