Their tail is dark chestnut and their wings are rich rusty brown with slightly darker primary coverts.

Their chin is pale tawny-ochraceous, their throat more intensely ochracous, their breast olivaceous-brown with blurry rufescent buff streaks, their belly medium olivaceous brown, their flanks a slightly darker brown with a rufescent tinge, and their undertail coverts dark rufous.

Juveniles are generally duller overall than adults, with a duskier (less brownish) crown and some dark brown edges on the throat feathers.

[5][6] The rufous-necked foliage-gleaner is found in coastal hills and the western slope of the Andes in Ecuador's El Oro and Loja provinces and in northwestern Peru as far south as the Department of Lambayeque.

It inhabits montane evergreen forest and tropical deciduous woodlands, where it favors bamboo, streamsides, and shady ravines.

It gleans and probes for its prey among debris, moss, bamboo stems, ferns, and bromeliads while hitching along branches and trunks.

The rufous-necked foliage-gleaner's song is "a harsh, nasal 'chick, chick, che-che, tirrrrrr', 2–3 seconds long, final note downward-inflected".