Bare-crowned Antbird

How to find it

The bird is shy and stays low in the forest, so listen for its whistled song to locate it rather than scanning the undergrowth. Patience matters: on a 2023 tour, one group got views from a riverbank by squeaking, and it took time. Another bird was moving in a very dark patch of forest at Bosque de Paz, so be ready for poor light. Army ant swarms are worth looking for too. A Spanish-language trip report describes two birds at a fresh swarm just after rain stopped, before other birds had arrived.

How to recognise it

This is a small antbird, about 15 to 17 cm long. Look for these marks:

Male: black plumage with bright blue bare skin on the forehead, crown and around the eye. Small white tips on the wing coverts show against the black.

Female: cinnamon-brown below, darker brown above, with blue skin only around the eye.

Both sexes: a red eye.

The bare blue crown gives the species its English name. Because the bird stays low and in shade, the blue skin and the red eye may be the first details you notice if it steps into a patch of light.

What it sounds like

Recording: er-birds, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

This bird forages in pairs for insects and other arthropods, mostly on the ground or within about 2.5 m of it. It hops between feeding spots and bobs its tail. It only occasionally joins the mixed flocks that follow army ant swarms, and only if a swarm passes through its territory.

One Costa Rican nest, found in June, was a dome of plant fibers and dead leaves sitting just above the ground on philodendron stems. A second nest, found in April, held two eggs.

Where it lives

This antbird lives in the understory at the edges of humid lowland forest, and it is described as uncommon. In Costa Rica and Panama it ranges from sea level up to about 1,200 m, while in most of the rest of Central America it stays below about 250 m.

Two subspecies occur in Costa Rica. One is on the Caribbean slope. The other, erratilis, is on the Pacific slope in Puntarenas and San José provinces.

Similar birds

The female has a similar pattern of blue eye skin to both sexes of Chestnut-backed Antbird, so the two can be confused. Chestnut-backed is chestnut above with a blackish head, while the female Bare-crowned is rusty brown overall and the male also has blue skin on the crown. Their songs differ as well: Chestnut-backed sings two or three whistled notes, roughly 'peeet peeew', while the Bare-crowned song is a longer run of whistles that speeds up at the end.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica the bird is called Hormiguero Calvo. In Nicaragua it is called Hormiguero Frentiazul, meaning blue-browed antbird. The scientific name means bare-headed thrush in Greek, and the species part means bare crown in Latin, which explains the English name.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list gives it the status R, resident, and the IUCN rates it Least Concern, though the population is thought to be decreasing.

Photography tips

This is a bird that is hard to observe, so an army ant swarm is your best stage. On the Peninsula trail at Arenal, one group found a swarm followed by four antbird species, including this one, and later got even better views on the same walk. Expect dim light close to the ground.