[2][4] The species' specific epithet and the former English name "Vieilloti’s Ground Cuckoo" commemorate French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot.

The upper surface of their tail is gray-brown and the underside gray brown darkening to black near the large white tips.

It might have once resided on Isla Vieques, and a single specimen believed to be a vagrant was collected on St. Thomas in the American Virgin Islands.

[3] The Puerto Rican lizard cuckoo mostly forages for prey from the middle to upper layers of the forest, though it also hunts in the understory and on the ground.

Its principal food is lizards (especially Anolis) and also includes adult and larval insects, eggs, and occasionally frogs.

The call is described in more detail as "an emphatic ka-ka-ka-ka of long duration gradually accelerating and becoming louder, sometimes with altered syllables at the end".

[3] A local name for the Puerto Rican lizard cuckoo is pájaro bobo mayor, "big ape bird", apparently because it sounds like a monkey.