Appearance

Brown-banded Antpitta, like other species of Grallaria, has an erect posture, long legs, and a very short tail, which gives it the distinctive antpitta silhouette. Rather plain overall, both sexes have dark brown upper parts, including the sides of the head, and gray lores. The throat is pale gray, the breast and flanks brownish, and the belly is similar in color to the throat.

Brown-banded Antpitta is relatively plainly marked compared with sympatric congeners. It differs from Tawny Antpitta (Grallaria quitensis), of higher elevations, by having a distinct band across the breast and being generally darker and browner (rather than pale ochraceous).

The plumage of Brown-banded Antpitta is uncomplicated and dull. Except in juvenile birds, the plumage is unstreaked. The crown, nape, back, wings, and tail are dull, dark brown, with the sides of the head slightly paler. The lores are pale gray to whitish, as is the throat and belly. The whitish underparts are broken by a diffuse, but distinct, pale brown to ochraceous band across the chest. The sides of the neck are a blend in colors of the back a breast band, and this brown ochraceous coloration extends backward onto the flanks and forward, to a lesser degree, onto the face and auriculars.

Original description from Chapman (1912):
"Female adult.- Above, deep, rich raw-umber, crown of the same color as the back, lores whitish with a slight admixture of black; ear-coverts and auricular region more ochraceous than back; rump slightly paler than upper tail-coverts which are of the same color as the back; tail fuscous, its exposed portions slightly more olivaceous or, in some specimens, more rufescent than back; exposed portions of wing quills essentially like the tail, the wing-coverts more like the back in color, two outer primaries nearly uniform fuscous with little if any brownish on their outer margin; under wing-coverts orange-tawny, inner margins of inner wing-quills narrowly
ochraceous for about the basal half, throat grayish white, sides of the throat and a broad breast band tawny-olive, sides and flanks more olivaceous; abdomen smokegray, medianlv creamy-white; under tail-coverts mixed gray, and olivaceous; thighs sepia; feet and bill blackish, the tip of the latter horn-color.

Male adult.- Resembles the female in color and in size."

No specific information.

Iris: dark brown

Bill: black with slightly paler tip

Tarsi and toes: slaty gray to blackish

Total length: 16.5 cm (Meyer de Schaunesee 1964, Krabbe and Schulenberg 2003), 17 cm (Restall et al. 2006), 18 cm (Hilty and Brown 1986)

Linear measurements:

wing chord 89.6 ± 3.5 mm; culmen, 19.3 ± 1.4 mm; gape 14.0 ± 1.4 mm; tarsus 46.6 ± 1.9 mm (n = 18; Kattan and Beltran 1999).

wing 85 mm; tail 53 mm; culmen 19 mm; tarsus 42 mm (n = 1, female [holotype]; Chapman 1923).

Mass: mean 52.5 ± 3.2 g (n = 18, unsexed; Kattan and Beltran 1999)