Flycatchers

Spotted Flycatcher Muscicapa striata

The Spotted Flycatcher was once a fairly common summer visitor to our leafy suburbs, open wooded areas and tall hedgerows alike. Things have changed, however, and the decrease in the British population of this species since the 1960s has been greater than for most other small birds that have declined over the same period. The number of Spotted Flycatchers arriving in Britain each May is now less than a fifth of what it was thirty years ago. The Hull area has not been immune form this crash, although Spotted Flycatchers still breed in several areas. They are also more widespread as passage migrants. The Spotted Flycatcher was a familiar breeding bird in gardens around Pearson Park in the early 1900s. Boylan (1967) mentions that they bred in a variety of places, mainly cemeteries, in 1960s Hull. Spring birds were seen at Kirk Ella and Hessle during the 1960s and 1970s and breeding was confirmed at nearby Little Switzerland in 1967. Up to three pairs nested at Hedon Road Cemetery until the early 1980s, since which time they have become virtually unknown there. Regular breeding birds at Snuff Mill Lane, Cottingham, disappeared in 1983, although breeding was still fairly common in gardens and woods around the village in the mid 1980s. The decline continued, however, and more long-established nesting sites were becoming abandoned each year. These included a Cottingham pair that bred annually in a South Street garden throughout the whole of the 1980s but failed to appear in 1991.

Helen Crowther's 1996 survey of the wildlife in Hull's Avenues revealed just occasional sightings of Spotted Flycatchers, but breeding could not be ruled out. In the same year there was just one record (in late May) of a pair at the Priory Road fields. A family party along the Old Main Drain hedgerow, North Bransholme, in July 1994 pointed to breeding somewhere close by that year but Spotted Flycatchers are generally no more than a scarce passage migrant in this part of the city. Recent breeding has been recorded in East Park and several of the cemeteries, such as General Cemetery. Up to two pairs regularly nest in the grounds of Holderness House, on the corner of Holderness Road and Laburnum Avenue. Other scattered pairs undoubtedly go quietly about their business in large gardens and copses in the western villages, such as Hessle and Willerby. The mature trees in the Sutton and Saltshouse Road areas of East Hull perhaps hold a few more.Passage migrants away from the breeding sites can turn up in any stand of trees or bushes but do not hang around for long. The earliest spring record was on 24^th April in 1968 but the species is one of the last to arrive each spring. Most appear between early May and early June. Four in a small copse at the Great Culvert Pumping Station on the Holderness Drain, near Bransholme, at the beginning of June 1998 was the largest gathering of spring migrants reported in the Hull area. Most are alone. Intensive coverage at Saltend in the mid 1980s found the Spotted Flycatcher to be purely an autumn migrant there. Up to four were seen there from mid August to mid September between 1984 and 1986. East Park still had two birds on 12^th September 1997 but the latest date for an autumn migrant in the Hull area was on 26^th September 1985.

Red-breasted Flycatcher Ficedula parva

This species is a scarce passage migrant on Yorkshire's east coast and is very rare inland. There have been just a few records in the Hull area, the exact number depending on how much faith you place in one or two of the earlier records, though I include all of them here for completeness. On 20^th May 1907 Mr Haworth-Booth saw a male Red-breasted Flycatcher at Hull Bank House (now called Haworth Hall), on the west bank of the River Hull not far north of Sutton Road Bridge, this being over a mile out into the countryside back then. A very good find and seemingly straightforward enough, Haworth-Booth reported his sighting in The Field later that month and went on to inform an acquaintance, Harold R. Jackson of Hornsea. In August of the same year Jackson reported in the Naturalist that he and his sister had seen a pair of Red-breasted Flycatchers on 4^th June at Thearne Hall, just a mile and a half north of Hull Bank House. Not only this, Jackson was certain that the birds were nesting nearby. Ralph Chislett, founder of the famous Spurn Bird Observatory and one of Yorkshire Ornithology's most celebrated names, repeated Jackson’s record of a pair in his 1952 Yorkshire Birds. J. R. Mather repeated this again in his 1986 The Birds of Yorkshire, although he noted the strangeness of the date for a passage species. Both authors also gave the location as Beverley. Neither Chislett nor Mather mention Jackson's certainty of a breeding attempt, but looking at Jackson's original account one wonders how such a record had been readily accepted in the first place.

Jackson reported that he first noticed the male bird on account of its low warbling song, which ceased when it was joined by "another evidently of the same species". Jackson took this second bird to be the female. The male, he continued, began flirting with the second bird in the manner of a Robin, elaborately bowing and raising its head. The size of Willow Warblers, Jackson admits that they were seen in bad light and deep shade. The plumage was noted as being uniform light brown on both birds, with the male sporting a bold red patch under the throat that extended partly onto the breast. Although observed for seven minutes, at no point is the most obvious feature of a Red-breasted Flycatcher, the striking white tail-sides, mentioned in Jackson's account.

In my opinion at least one of these birds, probably both, was clearly a Robin and nothing more. Hearing of Haworth-Booth's sighting just two weeks before he visited the area, I imagine Jackson was keeping his eyes peeled for the bird. On hearing a song he did not recognise coming from a red-throated bird that he saw badly, Jackson seems to have put two and two together and made five. The low warbling song was surely just a subdued version of the very variable repertoire of the Robin and the posturing is a classic description of a Robin's threat display to a rival, as the song of the Red-breasted Fkycatcher cannot be described as "low warbling" at all - it is a series of clear whistles. That Jackson was so certain they were nesting is testimony to the fancifulness of the record - Red-breasted Flycatchers nest no closer than eastern Europe - and I can only assume that Chislett and Mather never actually saw the original account. A more reliable occurrence was of an autumn passage bird near Hessle on 9^th September 1971. The next, and most recent, record was not until 4^th October 1989 when I discovered a first-winter bird in a hawthorn hedge along the Foredyke Stream at North Bransholme, just opposite Ladyside Close. I spotted this bird early one morning as a teenager on my way to school. I watched it for five minutes as it came as close as four feet before making typical flycatching forays into a swarm of gnats, showing the characteristic tail pattern as it did so. It eventually flew off north over my head, giving the typical melancholic alarm note as it went, but it could not be relocated later in the day. Both of these records were accepted by the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union's Reports Committee.

Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca

Breeding no closer than the woodlands of the North Yorkshire Moors and the eastern Pennines, Pied Flycatchers are scarce passage migrants in the Hull area. This is true throughout the East Riding, but they are regular on the Holderness coast.

The first mention of the Pied Flycatcher around Hull concerns a very unexpected breeding record at Hullbank Hall, now Haworth Hall, in 1895 when a nest containing six eggs was found in a yew tree close to a pond. Haworth Hall was a grand country house back then but now sits among the suburbs on the west bank of the River Hull, to the north of Sutton Road Bridge. Passage migrants were noted near Pearson Park at the beginning of the 20^th Century, being described as occasional visitors to John Nicholson's nearby town house. At least five were reported in Hull between 10^th and 12^th September in 1953 but Boylan (1967) could give just one passage record for the years 1960 to 1967, typically offering no further details. Another was seen in Hull on 13^th October 1969 and an even later bird was caught at Paull on 13^th November 1976. One was seen at Kirk Ella's Kerry Woods on 1^st October 1978 and North Bransholme hosted another on 19^th September 1983. Two were at Saltend on 22^nd August 1984 with another on 8^th September. 1985 saw one at King George Dock on 24^th September and a lovely male was at Saltend on 9^th May 1986, this being the only spring record for the Hull area. There were no more reports in the 1980s, probably reflecting a lack of reporting rather than a lack of birds.

A juvenile Pied Flycatcher was seen to board a Russian cargo ship, carrying timber, at the Spurn lightship on a very hot 2^nd August 1995. The bird stayed aboard and caught insects until the ship reached King George Dock. The most recent records for the 1990s, during a rather poor decade for reporting, came from East Park on 9^th September and Saltend on 6^th October in 1998. Both involved singles.

Any time between late August and early October would therefore seem to offer the best chance of finding a Pied Flycatcher in the Hull area. A small handful of birds probably pass through each year, and they may stop off in any area of trees or shrubs.