March is regarded as the official start of the bird breeding season and as such it is the time of year when we basically stop doing habitat management work in order to minimise disturbance on the reserve. The thorn coppicing and hedge laying was finished on schedule by the end of February and so the Wednesday and Thursday work parties are now focused on erecting a long stretch of stock fencing around the southern and eastern edges of the reedbed. It will take a number of weeks to complete, but once finished we are aiming to have a small number of cattle out grazing the reedbed late in the summer once the warblers have finished nesting. It's a bit of an experiment as we've not grazed the reedbed before, but in conjunction with our winter cutting and burning it should help keep the reedbed well managed and healthy, opening up areas within the blocks of reed and creating muddy patches which will provide more feeding areas for reedbed loving birds.
Whilst checking the fence line last week and trying to work out where an underground electric cable was running, I turned around to see a bittern fly up out of the Southern Phase of the reedbed! It was an amazing sight as it flew overhead and then landed in the Northern Phase. It was my first bittern on Otmoor so was a proper 'RSPB Moment'.
We are currently abstracting water from the River Ray into the reedbed, at the moment it's a bit stop-start depending on whether we have the go-ahead from the Environment Agency but it has meant we've been able to top up the Northern Phase, which in turn we drained into the Greenaways field (for the benefit of the lapwing, redshank and snipe, which will hopefully start nesting soon) and we are now topping up the Southern Phase to try and cover the muddy area to the right of the first viewing screen to hopefully lure in some passage waders.