This thrush ranges from eastern and southern Mexico into Central America. Males are dark, while females are browner and differ in appearance.
Adult males are sooty black, with a bright yellow eye-ring, bill, and legs. Females have olive-brown upperparts and paler, grayish underparts.
It uses humid evergreen and pine-oak cloud forests and forest edges. It forages both on the ground and in trees for insects and plant food, especially small berries; birds may be solitary or paired in the breeding season and gather loosely at fruiting trees in winter.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.