I may be a little late writing this as I flew over Otmoor on the 11th November but I want to share my experience and some of the photos with Otmoor’s followers. It is all thanks to one of our lovely volunteers and her very generous friend that I had this opportunity as well as being the only one in the office with a decent camera! With the plane being a small 2 seater I was a little apprehensive as I had only been on large planes to go on holiday and the last one of those was a few years ago, however once we were going it was great fun. We took off from Wycombe airfield and flew out towards Stokenchurch and Thame before turning towards the reserve, this gave me opportunities to practice taking photos and look at other areas I know well from this different angle. Approaching the reserve I could really start to see just how much water there is, we look at water levels and walk out across the fields but you still can’t appreciate just how much is actually there! We flew round twice starting at 2000 feet and dropping down the second time round to get a few closer shots of specific fields. I started taking photos as we approached the reserve and stopped as we finished our second circuit, giving about 10 minutes in between. In this time I managed to take 213 photos, but as you have to position from the sun and reflections of the Perspex you generally only use about 40% of any taken. Once I was home I found 70 of the photos were actually worth using and played a little with the contrast and brightness on these to improve the quality of the images. We have also looked out some of the old aerial photos of the moor to compare the changes and used the photos to plan work on the reserve. I have posted some of the photos below with a couple of the old aerial photos.
The bottom of Ashgrave, Big Otmoor, the reedbeds, Flood and Barn fields
A similar view from 1999
Big Otmoor, the reedbeds, Flood and Barn fields
Closes and Car park field
Greenaways
Greenaways, the reedbeds and Big Otmoor in 2002
Malt Pit