With all the rain we’ve had it seemed a wise idea to have a good wander round the moor today so see what was going on. There’s an awful lot of water about, with all the fields on the reserve having higher levels then I’d ever seen before. The bridleway down from Noke was about 2 feet under water and it was almost creeping into the pump house. To try and drain this bridleway and to save our precious electrics, the pump was turned on to take water off this part of the reserve and over into our Big Otmoor field. This will help solve the flooding problem, whilst also ensuring more water isn’t being put into the ring ditch which was already very high! Tomorrows volunteer work party has had to be cancelled because of the flooding.
A lot of wildfowl were on the moor, with wigeon and teal flocks moving around. About 400 lapwing were feeding on Greenaways and loads of small birds were feeding along the hedgelines, chiff chaff, redpoll and stone chat being the more unusual. I saw a couple of kingfishers and there were 9 snipe flying around over the flooded part of Ashgrave. Sadly the whooper swans reported yesterday don't seem to have stuck around. The flood waters have pushed lots of insects and seeds up out of the grass so there's plenty of food around at the moment to keep the hoards of birds happy. An otter and a very bedraggled badger were also reported from the reserve this morning.