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Joe Harris (RSPB Langford Lowfields Site Manager)
Annoyingly we have had another pile of rubbish dumped in the reserve car park; it looks like it’s from a recent house clearance. We have had to close off the end of the car park until the rubbish can be checked by the council for evidence of where it came from, but we hope to get rid of it early next week. The RSPB will have to pay for a skip to remove the rubbish, so on the off-chance you know of someone who’s recently had a house cleared of items including a fake white Christmas tree, a flat screen TV, a bin with a £10 note picture printed on it and an old letter to Flight Leftenant J. Hodgkinson, you should advise them to use a different clearance company next time.

After the wettest winter since records began, water levels across the moor are now dropping (assuming the current rain doesn’t reverse the process) and so lots of wet muddy areas are being exposed. These are great feeding sites for birds and Otmoor is still full of 1000s of them. Massive flocks of lapwings and golden plovers are roaming between the fields and a couple of curlews are feeding on Greenaways. I saw 22 dunlins and 25 ruffs yesterday and large numbers of pintails, shoveler, wigeons and teals are out on the Big Otmoor field. Two short-eared owls are being regularly seen near the bird feeders at dusk, so if you’re on the reserve in the evening it’s worth looking out for them. There are hares bouncing around all over the reserve and I saw a weasel dash across the car park yesterday.
Those lapwings planning on staying on Otmoor for the breeding season are starting to spread out in the fields, staking their claim on prime nesting territories. If you watch them, you should be able to see the males performing their spectacular, noisy, acrobatic display flight, as they zigzag, roll and dive over their chosen patch. Fights sometimes break out between rivals and the male will try and impress the female further by preparing nest scrapes in its territory. Female lapwings will inspect a number of different territories before settling on a mate, taking into account how well the male performs his display flight, how well he does at preparing the nest scrapes and how much food is available. It’s worth her being choosey as she wants the best for her offspring.
We have now reached the end of our thorn coppicing season and the volunteer work parties will be hedge laying for a couple of weeks, until our habitat management work stops for the spring. You may well have noticed that the viewing screen on the Southern edge of the reedbed is almost completed; the plan is to have it finished and open by the end of April.