New Zealand's long-billed wren was a small bird with stout legs and tiny wings.

Its reduced sternum suggests that it had weak flight muscles and was probably flightless, like the recently extinct Lyall's wren.

It is thought to have lived in sub-alpine shrub and tussock[2] (like the surviving New Zealand rock wren) and perhaps montane southern beech forest.

[4] The long-billed wren went extinct before the arrival of European colonists and explorers in New Zealand.

It was among the first wave of native bird species to go extinct after the introduction of Polynesian rats (or kiore).