This wood-quail lives in montane forests of northern Colombia. It is marked by a black forehead and red bill and searches the ground for insects and seeds. It is shy, so its calls may be heard before the bird is seen.
Its plumage is dark olive-brown, with black streaks on the head and neck. It has a black forehead patch and red bill; the lighter brown underparts are heavily streaked with black.
Black-fronted Wood-quails use dense vegetation in humid mountain forests. In Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, eggs were found in a ground hollow containing leaves and small sticks. Trees overhead and ferns around the hollow shaded the white eggs.
The nest was discovered on 15 May 2008 at 1,900 m in La Cumbre reserve. It lay on a steep slope about two metres above a trail, within a forest fragment of approximately 0.5 ha. The hollow measured 21 by 13 cm and about 15 cm deep, surrounded by herbs and ferns, and contained three eggs.
On 21 May, no adult was present and dry leaves covered the eggs. Separately, four downy chicks had been found in June of the previous year in forest at 2,200 m in the same reserve. Both a sheltered egg hollow and young chicks were recorded near the mountain forest floor.
IUCN Red List (BirdLife listing) · Least Concern · Global
BirdLife lists Least Concern globally. The 2010 nest report identified conversion to farms and pasture, logging, burning and hunting as threats in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta at that time. At the nest reserve, management had shifted from cattle farming towards habitat protection and recovery, retaining forest used by the species.