Uncovering habitat preferences of the little-known Eyrean Grasswren

Undetected for almost a century, we’re uncovering insights about an elusive and shy grasswren in Ethabuka’s dunes.

View an aerial photo of Ethabuka and the landscape is a reddish-brown with white swirls. Zoom in and the red shades part to form vertical strands, like sand ripples in a shallow sea. Focus more and ant-like smudges appear: trees and clumps of tussocky vegetation. 

Ethabuka is remote. It’s desert country with an abundance of reptiles, including Military Dragons (Ctenophorus isolepis) and Thorny Devils (Moloch horridus). We purchased the 215,000-hectare reserve in 2004, on Wangkamahdla Country close  to the border of Queensland and the Northern Territory, around 640 km south of Mount Isa.

“It was incredible,” recalls University of Queensland student Lucy Coleman. “I’ve been all over Queensland – but I’d never been to dune country.” When Lucy arrived in June 2025, the reserve had only recently become accessible following a period of intense flooding. The landscape was breathtaking. 

Lucy was supported by the Paul Hackett Memorial Scholarship for Bird Research and the Seeding the Future Program to study the Eyrean Grasswren (Amytornis goyderi), a small ground-dwelling bird which is known for being shy and elusive.

The Eyrean Grasswren’s status is listed as ‘least concern’ by the IUCN, but, as Lucy notes in her report, we know virtually nothing about the species: “Population size and population trends are entirely unknown.”

Monitoring and research are critical to accurately classifying species

One of Lucy’s supervisors was Bush Heritage ecologist Dr Nick Leseberg. As Nick explains, “finding out about these species is important, because it’s not until you have the knowledge that you can make robust judgements about the status of birds like these.”

Nick was part of the RARES Group (Research and Recovery of Endangered Species) which reviewed the IUCN classifications of Australian birds from 2000, 2010 and 2020. In each of those years, the study found 35% to 40% of species listed as ‘threatened’ had been misclassified.

“That error goes both ways,” says Nick, “some were listed as ‘critically endangered’ when they were only ‘endangered’, while the extinction risk was underestimated for others. The reason for these misclassifications, though, was always the same – we simply lack knowledge.”

Nick co-supervised Lucy’s research and described the process as akin to natural history. It's not guesswork or conjecture but careful observation: finding out what the birds need and what they're threatened by, not what we think they need or believe them to be threatened by.

There are about a dozen grasswren species in total, all endemic to Australia. For bird-watchers, many are prized species to spot. They are found in such remote habitat, and their inclination so shy, that to view them is monumental. Lucy puts it this way: “It’s fascinating to think that the grasswren you’re looking at may never have seen a person before.”

“The grasswrens can look the same in field guides,” says Lucy. “Brown, streaky. Although the Eyrean is rounder and pudgier. But when you see them in their different habitats, you see how different they are.”

What Ethabuka Reserve revealed about the species?

Ethabuka Reserve was selected as Lucy’s area of study because it contains both Sandhill Canegrass, thought to be the Eyrean’s preferred habitat, and spinifex dunes. When she first went over in June, quite a few volunteers accompanied her. They would split into pairs and each quietly take a dune.

“They’re incredibly cautious. Sometimes, you do playbacks of their call and find out you’d walked past three of them without realising.”

In total, Lucy located 36 Eyrean Grasswrens, and where she found them was illuminating. The Eyrean Grasswren was only observed in dunes with Sandhill Canegrass.

“You’d think they’d like spinifex,” she says. “Many other grasswren species do, they’re essentially big spiky fortresses for small birds and mammals. But these ones prefer canegrass.”

Plant diversity was high in the places they were spotted, which makes sense as it corresponds with greater food choice. The grasswrens also preferred areas with fewer but larger clumps of canegrass: the denser clumps provide shelter from predators and cool relief from the heat. 

The areas they were observed were also largely treeless, most likely because the trees offer perches for predators such as Grey and Brown Falcons.  But perhaps the most significant finding relates to fire. Recently burnt dunes displayed a lower diversity of plant species. As grasswrens do not tend to move far during their lifetime, often keeping to the same dune, this can have severe repercussions. 

When a fire burns through the area, it may wipe out local populations.

The knowledge from this study may be transferable to other species. 

As Nick says: “Most grasswren species are threatened, and like the Eyrean, the few species that have been studied all need long-term structurally complex vegetation to hide in and breed. What we learn on Ethabuka about managing threatening processes like fire and grazing, which reduce vegetation complexity, can be used to support the management and recovery of those other, less well-known species.”

We gratefully acknowledge the Paul Hackett Memorial Scholarship for Bird Research for supporting Lucy’s research at Ethabuka, and the visionary cohort of philanthropists who support the Seeding the Future Program for aspiring conservationists, with special thanks to the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation.