A well-named tiny songbird, “a head with wings,” with rather long bill, long legs, and very short tail. Long buffy supercilium is conspicuous even in the gloomy leaf litter and dense shrubbery where this minute bird lurks. Other brown, skulking warblers such as Dusky and Radde's have much longer tails and lack the strongly contrasting buffy supercilium. Song an insect-like, throbbing buzz recalling a katydid or cicada.