In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description and an illustration of the long-billed bernieria in the third volume of his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on the island of Madagascar.

[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 1789 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae he included the long-billed bernieria based on Brisson's description.

The top of the head, the upperparts and the tail are brownish green, the underparts are mainly yellow.

The bill is long and thin; the upper mandible has a small terminal hook.