This puffbird occurs from central Panama through western Colombia to western Ecuador, in wet forest and its edges. Its reddish-brown body is barred with black, and it waits quietly on a perch for prey. Its diet includes large insects and small lizards.
Its cinnamon-rufous upperparts have black bars; it has a pale collar, white throat, yellow eyes, and pale green bill.
It sits quietly on a perch and eats large insects and small lizards; the way it captures prey is not well documented.
The first described nest was a narrow tunnel in a clay bank in north-western Ecuador, with two well-grown nestlings.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.