Female hooded siskins are also similar, but the Andean has distinctive white undertail-coverts and more olive-green rather than gray overall coloration.

The tail is all black, and the wings lack greenish-yellow tips to the coverts but retain bright yellow bases to the inner primaries and secondaries.

The proposed subspecies S. s. capitaneus from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is typically included in the nominate.

The song, also goldfinch-like, is a lively rambling series of notes, high pitched and interspersed with rolling trills.

The nominate subspecies occurs in the coastal mountains of Aragua in northern Venezuela, the Andes of western Venezuela, in the Serranía del Perijá along the Colombia-Venezuela border and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of northern Colombia, and from the eastern Andes in Colombia south to Valle, Putumayo, Nariño and Pichincha Province in Ecuador.