It is found widely in woodland, savanna and scrub in northern South America in Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, the ABC islands in the Netherlands Antilles, and northern Brazil (mainly the Rio Negro/Branco region) with a disjunct population in south-western Pará.
East of the Andean Cordilleras, the Cetopsinae occur in the Aroa and Yaracuy River basins along the Caribbean versant of northern Venezuela, through the Orinoco River system and the coastal rivers of the Guianas, south through the Amazon basin to the southern portions of the Río de la Plata basin.
Its range stays contiguous along the Caribbean coast through the Guianas and only ends south and southeast of the Amazon River outlet with Marajo Island, and the outlet of the downstream Tocantins River, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão on the Atlantic coast.
Returning to the USA in 1932, he retired from the USDA, but joined the Allison Vincent Armour agricultural expedition to the British West Indies and Guianas the same year.
The range of the Ringed Antpipit is the entire Amazon Basin, the Guianan region, Marajó Island, and the southeast Orinoco River Basin region in eastern Venezuela; also the downstream half of the neighboring Amazon Basin river system in the southeast, the Araguaia-Tocantins River, with the range ending easterly on the Atlantic coast of Brazil's Maranhão state.
The range does not extend beyond the Orinoco River basin of Venezuela in the northwest, and in the east-northeast encompasses the Guianas; in the southeast Amazon Basin the range does not extend east of the Tapajós River drainage.