Santa Marta Antbird

The Santa Marta antbird is 14.5 to 15.5 cm (5.7 to 6.1 in) long. Adult males have a black crown and back with thin white streaks except in the center of the crown. Their rump is gray with a reddish tinge. Their flight feathers are black with buff edges and their wing coverts black with two white bars. Their tail is dusky olive with white tips to the feathers and dark band above them. Their face, throat, and breast are white with bold black streaks. Their flanks and crissum are bright rufous. Females have the same pattern but different colors than males. Their upperparts have cinnamon-buff rather than white streaks and their underparts are pale buff.

The Santa Marta antbird is found only in the foothills of northern Colombia's isolated Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. It inhabits the understorey to mid-storey of evergreen forest and secondary forest. It favors dense undergrowth and bamboo thickets. In elevation it ranges mostly between 500 and 1,500 m (1,600 and 4,900 ft).

The Santa Marta antbird's diet is not known in detail; it is thought to feed primarily on insects and probably also on spiders. It typically forages in pairs or in family groups and does not join mixed-species feeding flocks. Nothing else is known about its foraging behavior.