An elegant, greyish brown small bird, with streaked head and chest and pale underside. Its dark eyes and upright stance are also distinctive. The Spotted Flycatcher catches insects in flight, in short flights from a perch, where its long and narrow wings are obvious, often returning to the same perch.
I wondered if to include the Spotted Flycatcher in this Urban Birds at Hull series, as there are just a handful of recent records. At the end, I decided to, as up to the early 1980s, it was a regularly breeding species in Hull, as reported by R.K. Broughton in his Birds of the Hull Area, particularly in the cemeteries, parks and large gardens. The strong national decline of the species, as with other long-distance insect-eating migrants, has meant that Spotted Flycatchers are now very scarce migrants in the Hull area. The few recent records are from mid May for the spring passage, and from the end of August to mid September in a stronger autumn passage.
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