Mediterranean flycatcher - a very modern way of birding

Spotted Flycatcher - Corfu

I didn't expect to increase my Western Palearctic list by one today, but despite having never heard of  Mediterranean flycatcher before this morning, not only did I add it to my WP list, I even managed to tick both races!

"From 1 January 2018 the British Ornithologist's Union (BOU) will adopt the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) World Bird List for all its taxonomic needs, including the British List". There are gains and losses. Some species are lumped into one species, others such as tundra and taiga bean goose become two. Overall my list remains much the same. Click here for the full BOU statement.

However, it turns out that completely unbeknown to me, the IOC have split spotted flycatcher into two species in Europe. Spotted flycatcher Muscicapa striata, the bird we know and love in the UK, occurs over the majority of the Western Palearctic (including the vast majority of the Mediterranean).  The new species, confusingly called Mediterannean flycatcher Muscicapa tyrrhenica, occurs as two races with very limited range in the Mediterranean, M.t. balerica on the Balearic islands and M.t. tyrrhenica on Sardinia and Corsica.  This came to light (for me!) today following the discovery a few days ago of a possible Mediterranean flycatcher in North Yorkshire. I can't comment on the identification of that particular bird having not seen it, but you can read more about the ID features of the species on Birding Frontiers here.

I knew that I had seen "spotted" flycatchers in the Mediterranean previously, but they hadn't particularly stuck in my mind, and I struggled to remember exactly where I had seen them. Fortuntately having kept a meticulously detailed database of my bird sightings for many years I was able to query my records almost instantaneously and discover that not only have I seen quite a few on Mallorca of the race M.t. balerica, I've also seen several of the other race M.t. tyrrhenica in Sardinia. Result! One armchair tick and even a possible second pending a futher split of the two races!

Interestingly, the Yorkshire bird is sometimes being referred to as Tyrrenian flycacther, which presumably means that it most closely fits the Sardinian race rather than the Balearic. These two groups of islands also share other species which are rare or unknown elsewhere in Europe, including Balearic and Mamora's warbler. Like Mediterranean flycatcher, I've also seen both Balearic warbler in Mallorca and Marmora's in Sardinia, and in 2010 I saw a Marmora's warbler in South Wales. What a coincidence it would be if in the case of both the warbler and the flycatcher it was the Sardinian race which reached our shores. I believe that DNA has been collected and is on its way to the lab. The joys of modern birding!