I SPENT a wonderful afternoon last week in the company of a family of spotted flycatchers, just above the pretty village of Burnsall, in Wharfedale.

Since I was a toddler in the 1960s, the spotted flycatcher has suffered a spectacular decline in its UK population. It is now absent from many of its former strongholds, and in other places is barely hanging on.

This worrying decline may be due to factors occurring in the UK, along migration routes or on the bird’s African wintering grounds. It seems to be linked to poor survival rates of flycatchers in their first year after fledging.

So as I was watching ‘my’ family of flycatchers by the river Wharfe, within sight of the ancient church in Burnsall, I was witnessing a spectacle that would once have been common in parishes right across Britain.

The spotted flycatcher is one of only two species of this energetic family to nest in Britain. The other is the pied flycatcher, which still does quite well in a few mature woodlands in the Yorkshire Dales, often taking advantage of nest boxes.

Spotted flycatchers arrive in the UK from their winter quarters in May, and return there in September. During these summer months they need to establish territories, build nests and raise young, and latter requires an awful lot of insects - several thousand for each chick that fledges.

The work doesn’t stop there, however, as demonstrated by the parents of the three young flycatchers I was watching. They were continually searching for food, sallying out from elevated perches to catch insects in mid-air. When their beaks were stuffed full of insects they would return to their young, picked out by their even more spotted plumage, who eagerly gobbled up the winged offerings on their fence-post perches.

All four of the British hirundine species were also on view in the background, with their own young lined up on the church roof awaiting nutritious food parcels. Most busy of all were the house martins, whose young seemed to be spectating on their parents’ foraging flights, with their little faces following their parents back and forth.

The flycatchers, along with many other of our insect-eating birds, seem to be struggling because of marked declines in their insect prey in recent decades. But last week, in this particular part of Wharfedale, I was reminded of the countryside of my youth.

Brin Best

Wharfedale Naturalists’ Society