These four are all closely related, and DNA evidence shows they likely all descended from an ancestor species which reached the islands in a single colonization event.

When John Gould first described the species in 1837, based on specimens brought back from the islands by Charles Darwin, he named it Orpheus parvulus.

In 1890, Robert Ridgway created the genus Nesomimus for the mockingbirds found on the Galápagos Islands, and most taxonomists adopted the change.

[5] Like all of the mockingbirds found in the Galápagos, this species is long-tailed and relatively long-legged, with a long, slim, decurved beak.

However, like all native wildlife on the archipelago, it faces a number of potential threats, including habitat changes as the result of overgrazing, predation by various introduced species and fires.