Spotted Flycatcher

The Spotted Flycatcher has very discreet and plain plumage. The upperparts are a uniform, brown-grey color on the mantle. The wings, with their long primary projection, are dark brown and contrast with their coverts, coloured like the mantle and edged in whitish, like the tertiaries. The head is distinguished by a streaked brown crown, a big dark eye that stands out on the uniform lore-parotid, a wide beak with a yellow base in the lower mandible, and lastly a slightly streaked throat with a more or less strong brown malar streak according to the individual. The underside is whitish, washed in russet on the flanks. The chest is clearly marked with thin brown streaks, visible only up close and which gave it its specifig name striata. The undertail is the whitest part of the body. The tail is the same colour as the wings. The small feet are black. The juvenile, like most young muscicapidae when they leave the nest, have a distinctly spotted plumage, here light above and scaled below; however this plumage is fleeting and replaced at the following post-juvenile molt with one very similar to the adult one but with an russet tone around the eye and on the undertail, and a clear bar at the end of the large wing coverts. The subspecies balearica (Balearic Islands) is paler and less streaked than the nominate subspecies, and the subspecies tyrrhenica (Corsica and Sardinia) is of a warmer brown on the top and also less streaked on the bottom. A recent study (Pons et al. 2015) shows that these two subspecies are genetically distinct enough from the nominate subspecies to be considered as subspecies of a separate species which the authors propose to call Muscicapa tyrrhenica.But this distinction has not yet been approved by the relevant authorities.