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Spotted Flycatcher Migration Varied From Year to Year With Climate in Europe and Africa

Spotted flycatcher perched on a branch against a green background
Research · Ecology

The southward migration of spotted flycatchers (Muscicapa striata) varied from year to year with climate conditions in both Europe and Africa in a preprint posted on 10 February 2026. The manuscript has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The researchers combined two long-term monitoring datasets from different parts of the flyway. At Bukowo-Kopań on the Polish Baltic coast, ringing data covered autumn passage from 1967 to 2025. In northeastern South Africa, records from the Second Southern African Bird Atlas Project covered arrival and abundance from 2007 to 2025.

The same large-scale climate pattern appeared at both ends of the route

A large-scale atmospheric circulation pattern known as the East Atlantic/Western Russia pattern, measured for May–July, was related to migration measures at both Bukowo-Kopań and the South African study area. The authors interpret this as evidence that conditions linked to the breeding season can carry over into later stages of the annual cycle.

Temperatures around the Baltic from May to September also contributed to explaining annual variation in passage at the Polish station. Farther south, October–November temperatures south of the Sahel were strongly related to variation in arrival in South Africa.

The South African series was shorter

The authors explicitly describe the South African results as less robust because only 18 years of data were available there, compared with the much longer Baltic ringing series. The two datasets also do not follow the same individual birds, although ringing recoveries indicate that at least part of the population passing the southern Baltic can migrate to southern Africa.

Sources and image credit

  1. Remisiewicz, M., & Underhill, L. G. (2026). Climate in both hemispheres shapes the interannual variation in the timing of the southward migration of the spotted flycatcher Muscicapa striata from the Baltic region to South Africa [Preprint]. Preprints.org. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202602.0813.v1Primary preprint posted 10 February 2026 under CC BY 4.0. The manuscript is not peer-reviewed. It combines long-term spotted flycatcher migration data from the Polish Baltic coast and northeastern South Africa and relates annual variation to climate conditions across the flyway.

Image: Jerzy Strzelecki / Wikimedia Commons — spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa striata) photographed in Łódź, Poland. Representative species photograph from the European part of the flyway, not a bird from the study. · CC BY 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ · Source

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