I’ve been so focused on the hates and rabbits around my house this year that I’d kind of forgotten about birds!

I spotted this little one while I was out walking on the woods, it was being very inquisitive and definitely watching me as much as I was watching them.

Spotted flycatchers aren’t super uncommon to see, though they don’t tend to turn up in gardens, but they are on the UK red list. This means they’re classed as a species ‘of conservation concern’, of which there are around 70 species in the UK. There numbers have declined 90% since the 1960s and there are now only about 40,000 breeding pairs of spotted flycatchers across the four nations of the UK.

It’s very nice to see them active and thriving in our local woods, and I’m glad I managed to get a few pictures before they return to their wintering grounds in various African countries in a few months.