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Australian bird habitats:
Open grassland

Aboriginal names: "gilba", "warabo" = grass

Description of habitat

Parts of the Australian continent are covered with grass, with little or no other, especially higher, vegetation. Natural open grassland is mostly found in the semi-arid interior of the continent. The area covered by grassland has increased since white settlement as a consequence of land clearing for livestock, in the form of paddocks and pasture.

Note that there is a separate page on Triodia ("Spinifex") grass.

Bird species found in this type of habitat or plant

This is not necessarily a complete list. We display here some examples of bird species found by us in this kind of habitat or plant. Hover your cursor on thumbnails to see names of species; click on thumbnail to go to the page describing the species.

The list of birds shown here coincides largely with that for paddocks.

Photos

Open grassland to the east of Wilpena Pound in SA; only in the foreground a few shrubs and some scrub can be seen

Open grassland at Sturt NP with low shrubs after two years of good inland rainfall; in times of drought this will be gibber country

Spotted Harrier hunting in its typical way, low above grassland, which in this case is a paddock

Golden-headed Cisticola scrambling out of tall grass, where is has been feeding on the ground, between the tussocks
[Eulah Creek, NSW, May 2013]

These pages are largely based on our own observations and those of our contributors. The structure of these bird pages is explained HERE. For more salient facts on any bird species please refer to a field guide.

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