On 5 October 2024 Bas van Gennip and Marcel Lakeman were birding at the Ganzenhoek, Meyendel near Wassenaar ZH. Around 14:25 Bas van Gennip noticed a flycatcher with unusual features. He took several photographs and shared it with other birders on the local Whatsapp group. At 14:57 this picture was shared on the Dutch Birding Alerts, at first as Asian Brown Flycatcher Muscicapa daaurica, but hardly a minute later it was corrected into Dark-sided Flycatcher M. sibirica. The bird was seen till 17:59 hours by c 350 birders. It was sometimes elusive and always stayed c 1.5 meters above the ground and always on side branches of the omnipresent Maritime pines Pinus pinaster. The next day on 6 October 2024 it was still present, but it only found as late as noon, but was again seen till dusk, now by even more birders (c 400-500?) and better views were obtained. I rushed immediately after the first alerts and arrived at 16:25 hours and after some dying minutes I was able to see it several times between 16:34 and 17:40 hours. And for Gerard Steinhaus it was his 500th bird species in the Netherlands. Congratulations Gerard!
So in the end the bird was seen from 5 to 6 October 2024. If accepted, it will be the first record for the Netherlands and only the third record for Europe and the Western Palearctic.
Previous European records were at Höfn on Iceland from 1st to 5th October 2012 and at Skogøy, Herdlevær, Norway, from 5th to 10th October 2023.
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