Otmoor is proving to a great place for wildlife at the moment and Friday (13th April) was no exception. After a morning in the office up-dating risk assessments and preparing maps for the annual report, I managed to escape down to the moor to continue with our lapwing monitoring work. The lapwing are concentrated inside the predator fence on Big Otmoor at the moment and good numbers are sitting on nests, more water was pumped into this field from Ashgrave last week so hopefully despite the drought we can keep conditions as desirable as possible for them. Lots of redshank are also on the moor and can be seen feeding around the edges of the new Big Otmoor scrapes and flying overhead as you walk along the bridleway. Sometimes called 'Wardens of the Marsh' their evocative alarm calls can readily be heard as they alert other birds to danger.
The frogs are stil croaking away in the ditches, spring migrants continue to arrive and butterflies are flitting around all over the place. I added house martin, swallow and sedge warbler to my Otmoor year list on Friday as well as a pair of ravens kronking to each other as they flew overhead. Driving back across Greenaways I saw a couple of snipe and as a perfect ending to the day had a short-eared owl on the merlin perch (distant photo included below.) More migrants seem to be ariving on a daily basis and with cuckoo, redstart, yellow wagtail and garganey being recently seen on the moor, who knows what tomorrow might bring...