[3][2][4][5][6] The buffy tuftedcheek's alternative English name and it specific epithet commemorate the American amateur ornithologist George Newbold Lawrence.

The sexes' plumages are alike but the female has a significantly longer bill than the male.

The species' most distinctive feature is its namesake pale golden tawny tuft of feathers that flare on the side of the neck.

Their throat is whitish with a golden-tawny tinge, their breast a blurry pattern of wide dull brown and pale buff streaks, their belly dull tawny-buff with faint darker mottling, their flanks rufescent brown, and their undertail coverts ochraceous to cinnamon.

Juveniles have a much shorter bill than adults and lack the streaks on the crown; they have a blackish brown scallop pattern on the throat and breast and more rufescent flanks and belly.

[7] The buffy tuftedcheek's diet is mostly a wide variety of arthropods but also includes small amphibians.

It forages singly or in pairs and frequently joins mixed species feeding flocks.

It calls throughout the year, usually in the morning while foraging, a "loud, metallic, staccato peek!

The song is assumed to have a territorial function while the call is thought to be for keeping contact with a mate.