[3] It was later separated as a species, and later still was treated as conspecific with what is now the Ayacucho thistletail (Asthenes ayacuchensis).

Adults have a brownish face with a paler brown forehead and wide supercilium.

Their back and rump are brownish and their wings dark brown with rufous edges to the feathers.

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

It primarily inhabits elfin forest and Polylepis woodlands in the tree line ecotone.

It is found in lesser numbers in the higher páramo grassland and lower cloudforest.

[1] It is apparently "quite common in appropriate habitat" and "[l]arge portions of [its] range are in areas currently inaccessible to human disturbance."