Adults have a wide white eyering and dark brown lores on an otherwise chestnut-brown face.

Their tail is a more rufescent brown than the back; it is long and deeply forked with few barbs at the feather ends that give a ragged appearance.

Their throat and the rest of their underparts are gray with a paler belly and brownish-tinged flanks.

It is assumed to feed mostly on arthropods gleaned in the understory from foliage, branches, and moss.

Its song is "a long, slightly undulating or accelerating dry chatter or trill, which rises until near the end when it falls sharply".

[1] "Land-use practises such as burning, grazing, and the conversion/clearance of paramo grasslands and forest patches for small-scale agriculture has greatly reduced the total surface extent of the linear Andean tree-line ecotone [and the] effects of habitat loss on the tree-line bird community have not yet been studied quantitatively.