This small bird lives on dry, high Andean slopes and in scrub. It has brownish-gray upperparts, a white eyebrow and throat, and rufous sides.
The upperparts are brownish gray, with a conspicuous white supercilium and throat, a dark malar stripe and a small white crescent below the eye. The breast is gray, the underparts buff, and the sides rufous.
It lives on dry high-altitude hillsides and mountains with shrubs, where it forages mainly for insects in dense scrub and also takes some plant matter.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.