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Spotted flycatchers, Muscicapa striata, are sub-Saharan African migrants that come to the UK in late May to breed in our broad-leaved woodland and gardens. They are understated birds whose plumage is mostly grey with some streaking on the breast and crown but generally lacking in distinguishing features. Spotted flycatchers are a small passerine bird belonging to the family Muscicapidae (the old world flycatchers), as their name implies, they are characterised by their habit of catching flying invertebrate prey on the wing.

Male and female spotted flycatchers are not dimorphic (they look the same and cannot be separated on plumage features in the field), the juveniles have a partial-post-juvenile moult once leaving the nest and both adults and juveniles have a complete moult once they have reached their wintering grounds in Africa.
Spotted flycatchers eat a variety of winged insects from flies, aphids and hymenoptera (bees and wasps), they have adapted whiskar-like bristles on their bill to aid in catching this prey type. They are active, voracious insectivores.
This species is currently facing huge population declines in Britain and is a species of conservation priority; the last 40 years have seen summering populations plummet by ~89 %. This can be likely attributed to many factors including habitat loss on both wintering and summering grounds, lack of juvenile recruitment into the population via several mechanisms and a lack of invertebrate prey leading to increased clutch failure rates.

Some genetic work has been completed on spotflys before in order to demonstrate island speciation in the Mediterranean. Pons et al., 2016 showed that allopatric speciation occured on insular islands in ‘the Med’ which over evolutionary time, has resulted in two sub-species of spotted flycatcher (M. s. balearica & M. s. tyrrhenica). This shows that spotflys can be important biological models demonstrating complex biogeographical principles and yet their genome has not been fully mapped as of now.
Spotted flycatchers are an un-assuming but quietly beautiful species whose conservation is integral to understanding the breeding biology of sub-Saharan migrant passerines.