Adult males have a black cap with a red patch on the forehead and white spots on the rest of it.

Their flight feathers are brown with light buffy edges, especially on the secondaries and tertials.

Juveniles have a plain brown crown; their upperparts are browner than the adults' and have blackish bars.

The Clements taxonomy adds that it is "possibly also in adjacent Guyana and French Guiana".

[5] The arrowhead piculet's diet has not been fully described but is known to include ants and small beetles.

Males excavate a nest hole with some contribution by the female, placing it as high as 8 m (26 ft) above the ground.

Though it has a limited range and an unknown population size, the latter is believed to be stable.