They are widespread across Europe, Africa and Asia with most species occurring in forest and woodland habitats.

[1] Muscicapa flycatchers typically feed on flying insects which are caught by sallying out from an exposed perch.

[1] The genus was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa striata) as the type species.

[4] In 2010 two large molecular phylogenetic studies of species within Muscicapidae showed that Muscicapa was non-monophyletic.

It confirmed that Muscicapa was non-monophyletic and proposed a reorganised arrangement with several new or resurrected genera.