Otmoor is a special place for many reasons, not least because it is the sole remaining site in RSPB's Midlands region where snipe breed. We had 6 breeding males on the reserve this year and were lucky enough to stumble across 2 of their very well camouflaged nests. They prefer nesting in wetter areas with long vegetation and so our management work is organised to always leave some areas of the reserve in suitable a condition for them. Longer areas of vegetation are left uncut until later in the year (as snipe tend to breed later than other waders) and if neccessary we can release water from the reedbed into the fields to ensure the ground doesn't dry out too much for them. Interestingly when the snipe chicks have hatched the brood is split in half with the male taking one lot of chicks and the female the other.
As well as snipe breeding on Otmoor, a lot also over winter on the reserve. It’s always hard getting an accurate count as they are such secretive birds, but during winter there must be hundreds of them spread out across the whole moor. Many of these will be birds moving over from Europe.
Snipe have massively long sensitive bills which they use for probing deep into soft mud looking for invertebrates to eat. Having nice soft muddy areas available for them is therefore very important and so as well as the cattle producing suitable areas when they trample around the edges of pools and ditches, we also create such areas by using the tractor and rotavator. I could see when I was out in the Big Otmoor field at the end of last week that the snipe were really liking feeding in the rotavated sections, it was hard to avoid flushing them up off them, particularly those surrounded by longer vegetation.
As well as lots of snipe, there are many other wildfowl and waders around on the moor at the moment. The October WeBS (Wetland Birds Survey) was carried out yesterday (15th) and the results are shown below...
Closes: 75 greylag geese, 1 canada goose, 5 mallard
Greenaways: 17 mallard, 1 kingfisher, 1 snipe, 2 mute swan, 1 cormorant, 2 grey heron
Ashgrave: 17 mallard, 8 teal, 154 Canada geese, 45 greylag geese, 2 coot, 24 black-headed gulls, 4 little egret, 80 lapwing, 3 little grebe, 60 wigeon, 5 mute swans, 8 snipe
Big Otmoor: 8 mute swans, 20 Canda geese, 14 mallard
Reedbed: 22 teal, 6 coot, 1 moorhen, 1 Canda goose, 7 gadwall