The cricket warbler is a small, perky warbler with a long tail made up of twelve grey, black and white tipped feathers with the feathers getting longer from the outside to the centre, creating a graduated tail.

It is pale buffy rufous on the upperparts, with black streaks on the crown and black tips to the primaries and upper wing coverts, a pale yellow rump, a white supercilium and whitish cream underparts.

[2] The cricket warbler is quite a sociable species and is usually seen in small parties of around half a dozen birds which move restlessly from one patch of low scrub to another.

It is a partial migrant, with the northern populations moving southwards in the dry season, returning north with the rains.

Breeding has been recorded in July in Mali and Mauritania, all year in Senegal and in January to April and again in August in south Sudan.