Otmoor is proving to be great for bird life at the moment, the whooper swans appear to have moved on but there are still loads of interesting wintery type birds flapping around the moor. Just yesterday for example a short-eared owl and hen harrier were seen, about 3000 lapwing and 2000 golden plover were moving around the flooded areas in huge flocks, two kingfishers were fishing in the ditch near the bird feeders, bullfinches and yellowhammers were feeding in the car park field and seven shelduck were floating around in the Big Otmoor field. Yesterday we had another great sighting when the whole staff team got great views of two bearded tits in the reedbed. We were never able to get good views of both birds at the same time but one of them at least was a stunning looking male.
Winter is the time of year when we do a lot of our habitat management work and this week we have been very busy cutting reed in the northern reedbed and thinning out the scrub in the car park field. We cut the reed to create open areas which are great for birds to feed in. Cutting also allows us to remove leaf litter to prevent it decomposing and raising the soil levels in the reedbed. We rotate around the areas of the reedbed we cut, so there are always a range of different 'ages' of reed habitat, this benefits, for example; insects, that live in the reed detritus and old reed stems and also bearded tits that require old leaf litter to make their nests from.
The scrub in the car park field is being thinned out to benefit grasshopper warblers (whose numbers nationally are rapidly declining https://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/g/grasshopperwarbler/index.aspx) and also the rare brown hairstreak butterfly. On Otmoor grasshopper warblers seem to prefer habitat with smaller, isolated thorn bushes with lots of long grass and brambles around the bottom, they nest in the long grass and then scramble up, like small mice, into the bushes to sing their amazing grasshopper-esque song. The brown hairstreak butterflies had a really good year last year and lots of their eggs have been found on the small blackthorn bushes around the outside of the car park field (labelled with white tags). Brown hairstreak lay their eggs on younger blackthorn and so our work in the car park field removing the taller, older thorns will encourage the growth of new, more black hairstreak-friendly bushes.
Photo below shows a very, very small brown hairstreak butterfly egg.
Yes in the springtime the Groppers will come back to Otmoor. The field next to the car park is the most reliable place to hear them reeling and you can often hear them as soon as you step out your car. Seeing them though can be a bit trickier!
Excellent round up. Nice to hear about all the good work going on. So Otmoor gets grasshopper warblers does it?