page_title: Grey grasswren
section_title: Distribution and habitat
hierarchical_section_title: Grey grasswren / Distribution and habitat
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of typical Grey Grasswren habitat at Frome Swamp, New South Wales Australia
context_page_description: The grey grasswren is a passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It is found on arid inland floodplains of Australia where it is endemic. The grey grasswren is a rarely seen elusive bird that was first sighted in 1921 but not taxonomically described until 1968. Its greyish coloration and very long tail distinguish it from all other grasswrens. While some recent research has been conducted, there still remain many gaps in the knowledge about the ecology of this cryptic bird.
context_section_description: The grey grasswren occupies a restrictive area of arid inland floodplains of central Australia. Sightings have occurred at the Bulloo Overflow in the New South Wales/Queensland border area, lower Cooper Creek, along the Kallakoopah anabranch of the Diamantina River and the overflow areas of lakes Machattie, Koolivoo and Mipea on Eyre Creek in South Australia.
  These birds frequent mainly floodplains of the above systems which contain areas dominated by lignum and cane grass on major drainage lines between resident sand dunes.  In some swampy areas, a dense understory of spike-rush, channel millet, and sedges are present. The grey grasswren has also been known to occupy open vegetative areas well beyond the lignum swamps which are less subject to inundation during flood events. It appears that in drought years the grey grasswren occupies tall dense lignum as a refuse while in normal years it prefers other habitats. Hardy recorded significantly more captures in declared drought years than in normal years.
  During 2011, an extensive grey grasswren survey was conducted at Frome Swamp in New South Wales which had recently experienced substantial rainfall and resultant lignum and cane grass growth. Despite the use of exhaustive surveys using mist netting, playback, vocal and visual methods, no grey grasswrens were located.  This result could suggest that the species may be nomadic, an observation previously made by Hardy arising from his surveys in 2002 and 2003 at another location.
caption: Grey grasswren habitat
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "2110", "Image XPKeywords": "[104, 0, 97, 0, 98, 0, 105, 0, 116, 0, 97, 0, 116, 0, 0, 0]", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}