In Victoria, the speckled warbler is found within a broad strip, including the Chiltern Box-Ironbark and Warby-Ovens National Parks, the Bendigo region, the Brisbane Ranges and You Yangs, across to Balmoral on the western side of the Grampians.

[2] Its preferred habitat is open eucalypt woodland with rocky gullies, tussocky grass, scattered logs, and sparse shrubbery.

[6][8][2][4] Like the redthroat (Pyrrholaemus brunneus), the speckled warbler makes a distinctive whirring sound with its wings in flight.

[2] It builds a dome-shaped nest with a side-entrance in a slight hollow, near the base of a tree or dense shrub, or among fallen branches.

[6][2] The nest is loosely built of dried grass, bark-shreds and moss, often lined with feathers and fur, and resembling the surrounding debris.

[4] It feeds on the ground, often in the company of other birds (mixed species flocks), such as the buff-rumped thornbill (Acanthiza reguloides), eastern yellow robin (Eopsaltria australis), white-browed scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis), spotted pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus), weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris), and silver-eye (Zosterops lateralis).

Its chief prey are beetles (Coleoptera), wasps and winged ants (Hymenoptera), moth and butterfly larvae (Lepidoptera), mantids and grasshoppers (Orthoptera).

[4] Threats include land clearance, leading to the advent of invasive weeds and increased predator pressure, as well as over-grazing and salinization with consequent fragmentation and degradation of habitat.

On the IUCN Red List, the speckled warbler was uplisted from near threatened to least concern status in 2000, having found to be more common than previously believed.

[1] Speckled warbler are not listed as threatened on the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.