Dark-sided Flycatcher in Norway!

At lunchtime Thursday 5 October 2023 fellow birder Bert de Bruin was in the field, and sent a photo of a deviant flycatcher he just had seen. Bert and another birder, Julian Bell, had just left the bird that was present an hours drive from Bergen in Western Norway. It looked like a stange Spotted Flycatcher, which it also was initially identified as. However, Bert was not satisfied with this, and sent a picture for comments. The boc-pic was rather poor, but the bird did look stange. The prominent eye-ring that was clearly visible broke the legs of the spotted idea, and was the beginning of the largest twitch in Hordaland county up to date.

The Dark-sided Flycacher is breeding in Central and Southeast Siberia, and spend the winter in Southeast Asia. It has only been recorded once before in Europe and the Western Palearctic before, at Iceland on 1 October 2012.