The head pattern is distinctive, with a dark cap and black eyestripe separated by a white supercilium.

The male and female are similar in plumage in all tchagra species, but distinguishable from immature birds.

These are species typically of scrub, open woodland, semi-desert and cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa.

They hunt large insects from a low perch in a bush, and the larger species like black-crowned tchagra will also take vertebrate prey such as frogs and snakes.

The dark Angolan subspecies of marsh tchagra was formerly sometimes split as Anchieta's tchagra, Tchagra anchietae, named after Portuguese explorer José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta by his zoologist compatriot José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage in 1869.