Flycatchers forests

The LIFE.VISTULA.PL project is implemented in 4 Natura 2000 areas. The largest of them is the Upper Vistula Valley, which is famous for the numerous and diverse world of birds inhabiting water and marsh habitats. Their greatest abundance can be observed at the Goczałkowice Reservoir and in breeding ponds.

Thanks to the courtesy of Marcin Karetta, who is currently monitoring birds for RDOŚ Katowice, we can learn more about their habitats and habits. At the beginning, something unusual for this area, i.e. a forest representative of avifauna.

Not everyone knows that the intimate, fragmented forests of the Natura 2000 area of ​​the Upper Vistula Valley are home to a large population of a small, though loudly singing bird – the collared flycatcher.

This specie, protected throughout the European Union, likes deciduous and mixed forests. It inhabits the oldest parts of them in greatest numbers, where there are plenty of hollows in which it can lay and incubate eggs. He also likes to use nesting boxes.

This flycatcher is a small bird, residing among the leaves in the crowns of trees, so it is also difficult to see it. That is why the ornithologists counting this bird rely on hearing, picking up its characteristic, short and “grinding” song in the forest hustle and bustle. Sometimes it happens that from one place you can hear as many as three such motley singers at the same time!

Sound recordings of the collared flycatcher, available at http://xeno-canto.org/723932. Author Ireneusz Oleksik.