With Autumn now upon us and wetland bird numbers starting to increase on the reserve it's time for the Otmoor staff to start doing the monthly WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) counts . As well as carrying out the official Core Counts on the dates specified by BTO, we also carry out a monthly unoffcial count to for our own records. At this early point in the season we only focus on those fields which are holding water, as the season progresses however this will change and all fields on the reserve will be surveyed. It's one of the few times we actually get to do any birding on the moor during work time so we all look forward to doing WeBS.
Counts for the September WeBS:
Reedbed59 mallard, 7 shoveler, 5 gadwall, 67, teal, 2 grey heron, 67 coot, 7 cormorant, 5 mute swan, 1 little egret, 1 tufted duck, 5 moorhen, 7 wigeon, 2 little grebe
Ashgrave1 grey heron, 1 mute swan, 4 little egret, 6 little grebe, 2 mallard, 2 shoveler, 60 wigeon, 50 black-headed gulls, 24 lapwing
Big Otmoor1 pintail, 25 mallard, 30 teal, 6 mute swan, 2 grey heron, 5 snipe, 93 greylag geese, 2 coot, 2 lesser black-backed gull
So there was a nice range of wildfowl and waders on the moor, it was especially nice seeing my first pintail of the season. I also saw a hobby and 2 yellow wagtail on Big Otmoor, lots of sand martins over the reedbed and I had about 100 swallows flying around the tractor later in the day, catching insects as I flushed them up from the grass.
There are still large numbers of dragonflies along the visitors trail, with the odd butterfly thrown in for good measure. Brown hares were lolloping around on Big Otmoor, a couple of young newts (efts) scurried across the visitor trail and I saw a bank vole hiding under an old metal sheet. I took these photos on my broken camera phone, it has a crack across the screen and the colour contrast is rubbish but you can get the general idea...