ABSTRACT.-Philopatry and dispersal distances of female Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) are presented for European populations using data from 25 breeding areas from 40 to 70ЊN. Female annual survival probabilities according to capture-recapture models were similar in two study areas in central Spain (45 and 52%). The present study shows that survival is underestimated by using annual local return rate in one of the two breeding populations under study in central Spain. In southern and central Europe, females were found to return equally regularly to their breeding areas, whereas in northern Europe (latitude Ͼ60ЊN) females returned at lower rates. I did not find that median dispersal distance varied among sites, nor was breeding distance related to locate survival rate. Therefore, the present study suggests that the decline in between-year local return rate of female Pied Flycatchers with increasing latitude over Europe may be more probably caused by differences in mortality than by geographical differences in site fidelity.In many species of birds, adults show high breeding-site fidelity (Greenwood and Harvey 1982). A typical passerine that shows a high level of fidelity to the breeding territory in successive breeding seasons is the Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) (Lundberg and Alatalo 1992). Because of this, female and male local return rates have repeatedly been used in analyzing annual survival rates (Askenmo 1979, Røskaft et al. 1986, Jä rvi et al. 1987, Slagsvold and Lifjeld 1988, Alatalo and Lundberg 1989, Potti and Montalvo 1991a, Sanz 1997a, Siikamäki and Hovi 1997, Eeva and Lehikoinen 1998, Hemborg and Lundberg 1998, Hemborg 1999. In those studies, local return rate was often estimated as the proportion of marked individuals realized in one year that were recaptured in the next year. However, local return rate includes both the probability of survival and the probability of recapturing on the next year , and is affected by dispersal distances. These confounding factors might limit the interpretation of those studies, and it is questionable whether local return rate could be used as a survival estimate .In a previous review of female local return rates and breeding dispersal distances from different Eu-1