Conservation efforts succeeded in increasing the population to around 400 birds by the mid-1980s, and they have subsequently been reintroduced to several sites, but remain endangered.

Birds of both species are about the same size as a common starling (roughly 20 cm long) and cryptically coloured in drab browns and blacks.

They occupy dense undergrowth—the rufous scrubbird in temperate rain forests near the Queensland-New South Wales border, the noisy scrubbird in heaths and scrubby gullies in coastal Western Australia—and are adept at scuttling mouse-like under cover to avoid notice.

The males' calls, however, are powerful:[2] ringing and metallic, with a ventriloquial quality, so loud as to be heard from a long distance in heavy scrub and almost painful at close range.

Females build a domed nest close to the ground and take sole responsibility for raising the young.