This wren inhabits the mountains from southern Costa Rica into Panama, using high-elevation bamboo thickets and forest edges.
Adults have tawny upperparts with fine black bars on the wings and tail, a broad white supercilium, and a white eye-ring.
It uses bamboo thickets in páramo and subpáramo, secondary growth, and oak-forest margins at about 2,800–3,600 m.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.