[2][3][4][5] To further complicate matters, these taxa have plumage, morphological, vocal, behavioral, and nest structure characteristics that may better place them in the thornbird genus Phacellodomus rather than Asthenes.

Adults have a light gray supercilium and an indistinct brownish line behind the eye in an otherwise dull buff face.

Their iris is dark brown to light gray, their maxilla black or dark gray, their mandible blackish (often with a pinkish base), and their legs and feet blue-gray to black.

Juveniles have an entirely white throat and faint dusky bars or mottling on the breast and belly.

[8][9] The dark-winged canastero is found from southwestern Peru's Department of Arequipa south into northern Chile as far as the Tarapacá Region and east into western Bolivia's La Paz and Oruro departments.

It forages on the ground and in low woody vegetation, usually singly or in pairs, and gleaning for its prey.

The nest is often built in a Polylepis tree and less commonly in a shrub or on a columnar cactus.

The dark-winged canastero's song "may begin with a series of introductory notes, but these apparently are not always given.