The male is a medium-sized bird, up to 25 cm long, with flame orange and golden yellow plumage, elongated neck plumes and yellow-tipped black tail.

The masked bowerbird was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Coracias aurea.

[2] He cited the earlier description and illustration of the "golden bird of paradise" by the English naturalist George Edwards.

[3] Linnaeus specified the type locality as Asia but this has been corrected to the Bird's Head Peninsula (Vogelkop) in northwestern New Guinea.

[5] The masked bowerbird is now one of four species placed in the genus Sericulus that was introduced in 1825 by the English ornithologist William Swainson.