It is found in Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Males of all four subspecies have bright blue bare skin on their forehead, forecrown, lores, and around their eyes.

[5][10] The bare-crowned antbird's diet includes a variety insects (e.g. cockroaches, beetles, ants, and grasshoppers), other arthropods such as spiders, and small lizards.

It typically forages singly, in pairs, or in family groups in dense vegetation, mostly on the ground and within about 2.5 m (8 ft) above it.

It was a dome of thin plant fibers and dead leaves, placed about 11 cm (4 in) above the ground on horizontal Philodendron stems.

[5][12] Another nest, discovered in April also in Costa Rica, was of similar construction but placed about 1.2 m (4 ft) above the ground nestled in leaf litter on a broken palm.

The male bare-crowned antbird's song is "a series of clear sweet whistles, rising in middle and accelerating at end, Teuu-tip-Tip-Tip-Tip-Tip-Tip-Tip-Tip-Tip'Tip'Tip'Tip'Tip".

[8] Others are "a longer...rising and falling note...and [a] trill-like bubbling rattle that often drops initially in pitch and intensity".

[1] It is considered uncommon in northern Central America,[8] rare to common in various parts of Costa Rica,[9] and local in Colombia.

[7] "Although this is primarily a bird of second-growth habitats, the widespread conversion of native forest to cattle pasture and intensive agricultural production, especially oil palms (Elaeis guineensis), pineapple and bananas in lowlands and coffee in foothills, is not conducive to sparing or creating the kinds of mature second growth that this species requires.