[1] The description of a new species by Edward Pierson Ramsay, Atrichia rufescens, was published in 1867 in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1866).

Ramsay purchased two male specimens from T. MacGillivray and compared them with a previously described species from the southwest of Australia.

The collector J. F. Wilcox shot these specimens in dense vegetation along the edge of Bowling Creek, near the Richmond River in New South Wales, noting the great difficulty in obtaining them.

The epithet rufescens was proposed for the rufous tint of the plumage that distinguished it from the western scrubbird, named by John Gould as Atrichia clamosa.

The species occurs only in isolated locations in north-eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland.