[3] In 2018 BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World elevated it to species status based in part on a 2016 publication.

[2] Grallaria antpittas are a "wonderful group of plump and round antbirds whose feathers are often fluffed up...they have stout bills [and] very short tails".

They have deep olive buff lores, a thin and indistinct whitish eyering, and brownish ear coverts.

[11][12][13] The Perija antpitta is found entirely within the Serranía del Perijá in the Venezuelan state of Zulia and the Colombian departments of La Guajira and Cesar.

However, it appears to favor the floor and understory of humid montane forest, its edges, and also nearby disturbed areas.

They eat arthropods and other invertebrates captured while running or hopping on the forest floor and stopping to find prey by flipping aside leaf litter and probing the soil.

The Perija antpitta's long song is a "descending series of 10–20 notes uttered at an average pace of about 5 notes/s and with a frequency drop from start to end of about 500 Hz.

In the Sierra de Perijá, forests in elevations below 2,000 m are under threat from a range of processes, including colonisation, ranching and the cultivation of narcotics, which are aided by the roads approaching the Colombian side."