The Spotted Flycatcher (Muscicapa striata) is a plain, grey-brown bird found throughout Sweden that is easy to overlook were it not for its distinctive posture and hunting style. It measures 13–15 cm in length, has a wingspan of about 23–25 cm and weighs just 13–19 grams. The plumage is uniformly grey-brown above and dull whitish below, with faint dark streaking on the forehead and breast that gives the species its scientific name, striata, "the streaked one." Rather than bright colours, it is the bird's upright stance on an exposed perch that usually gives it away first.
Its calls match its understated appearance: a thin, sharp "tsett" or short clicking notes, while the song is a quiet, sparse string of thin, creaky tones that is easily missed. Despite this modest voice, the Spotted Flycatcher is one of Sweden's most numerous breeding birds, with a population running into several hundred thousand pairs. It is a long-distance migrant that arrives late, often not until the latter half of May, yet leaves early again in August and September to winter in Africa south of the Sahara. Nests are half-open structures tucked onto a ledge, against a climbing plant on a house wall, in a woodpile, or inside a half-open nest box, and the female lays four to six eggs incubated for around two weeks by both parents, who can manage two broods in a good year. True to its name, the bird hunts by watching from a fixed perch, darting out to snatch a flying insect in mid-air and typically returning to the very same branch — a repeated sallying technique that is its clearest behavioural signature.
Read about this species in Swedish →