The Broad-billed Motmot is distributed from Honduras through Panama and down the Pacific coast to Ecuador and in part of the Amazon Basin south of the Amazon. It is found mainly in humid forest.

In the sub-species east of the Andes it lacks the bare tail shafts that are found elsewhere. The head, neck and upper breast are cinnamon rufous while the rest of the upperparts are green. There is a black mask through the eyes and a large black spot on the breast. A feature which distinguishes it from the similar, though larger, Rufous Motmot Baryphthengus martii is the blue-green chin.

They feed mainly on insects and their larvae and can often be found following ant-swarms to capture the prey that these disturb. Like all motmots, it nests in a burrow in the ground or on a bank.

There are illustrations in HBW, Volume 6, Pages 265, 269 and 278; and Hilty & Brown, Plate 18.