This ovenbird has grey-brown plumage, a white eye-ring and a long rufous-brown tail. In the northern Peruvian Andes, it forages in humid scrub near forest edges.
About 19.5 cm long. The upperparts and crown are grey-brown, the throat is whitish and the underside dull grey-brown. It has a white eye-ring and a long, graduated rufous-brown tail with wispy feather tips.
It forages in humid scrub and forest edges near treeline. In Peru it is recorded in montane forest on the east Andean slope north of the Marañón Valley, at about 2,000–3,300 m.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.