Endangered
Noisy Scrubbird
Atrichornis clamosus
Noisy Scrubbird is a perching bird in the family Atrichornithidae (order Passeriformes) — Atrichornis clamosus, recorded as Endangered and tied to Australia.
Appearance
The noisy scrubbird features a dark brown coloured back, rust-like coloured wings and a speckled chestnut colored breast region with a grey-brown or pink bill and brown or silver legs and feet.
Range and habitat
Populations of the bird have been translocated to nearby Bald Island, in Waychinicup National Park, as well as the Porongorup Ranges, where a bushfire had destroyed much of the population. In September 2025 three birds were reintroduced to West Cape Howe National Park where it has not been found since the 1890s. A reason that the noisy scrubbird's populations are so threatened is due to them being a very endemic species with specific living conditions and niche.
While there have been some great successes with the reintroduction and management of the scrubbirds, lightning-induced fires have damaged much of the management progress.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Noisy scrubbirds are sexually mature at approximately 5 years of age for males and the first breeding season for females. Unlike many other birds they lay one egg at a time and have a clutch size of only 2 eggs.
The nest is a circular-shaped structure typically built in low-lying shrubbery, rushes or sedges and is made from common sticks, leaves and decaying plant matter. Males play no part in the nest-building, but it is believed they may defend the territory the female has laid her eggs in.
In crisis
The noisy scrubbird is listed on the IUCN Red List as an endangered species. The species was presumed extinct when Edwin Ashby searched unsuccessfully at Ellensbrook (Margaret River) in 1920, although he noted a report by a resident of its call and movements in deep karri forest and anticipated it would be rediscovered in similar habitat. The populations of the noisy scrubbird are declining despite 50 years of conservation and management.
Major threats include forest fires, predation by introduced species such as foxes, feral cats and black rats, degradation of habitat, soil fungi, introduced mammals, climate change and lack of genetic variation. The fungi Phytophthora cinnamomi has become more abundant in the scrubbird's range and has the ability to kill and degrade massive amounts of forest, that can heavily affect the diversity of the forest, and could easily and rapidly displace many of the remaining scrubbirds.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Noisy Scrubbird is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Noisy Scrubbird, Wikidata item Q935356. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
