A small ground-dwelling bird that inhabits wet forest or rainforest, it is mainly insectivorous.

The crown and upperparts are dark- to olive-brown, and the underparts cream, white or washed-out olive.

The yellow-throated scrubwren was described and illustrated by the English bird artist and ornithologist John Gould in 1838, and given the binomial name Sericornis citreogularis.

The male bird has a black masked face and ear coverts, with yellow throat and eyebrow.

In the Sydney Basin this may be the Illawarra escarpment, and wetter places in the Dharug- and Royal National Parks.

[11] Insectivorous, they feed at ground level, unlike the related large-billed scrubwren (S. magnirostris) which lives in the same wet forest habitat but forages higher in the leaf layer and on branches.

The nest is a large structure of long pieces of dried grasses and leaves, sticks, palm fibre, bark, and ferns and feathers for lining.