You never quite know what you’re going to see on the moor and so it was a nice surprise to come across a field vole nest yesterday. It had at least 5, very young pink vole pups snuggled up in it. The nest was tucked away in a hole I’d buried a lapwing nest camera battery in. As well as chewing up part of the dry bag (that protects the battery) to make the nest, a lot of dried grass had also been collected up to make a cosy protective shelter. I have found lots of toads and newts in these holes too, so have inadvertently been creating some good, dark and secure homes for various beasties.
Other recent sightings on the moor have included lots of hobbies, at least 2 turtle doves (I saw a pair sitting on the Greenaways cattle pen yesterday), a curlew sandpiper, lapwing chicks, drumming snipe, ruff, marsh harrier, grasshopper warblers and a whimbrel. Grass snakes are being seen and it’s been exciting to hear that a pair of common terns have taken up residence on our tern raft. They’ve been seen feeding each other and making a nest scrape, so fingers crossed they’ll breed.
Cattle are now out on the Ashgrave field and the Tuesday volunteers have been hard at work erecting a long section of electric fencing to keep them in the southern, drier part of the field. During the bird breeding season we are trying to protect the lagoon area and we are also wanting to keep cattle away from the area along the northern side of Ashgrave to let the reed area establish itself more. The cattle are a great benefit to the reserve but can also be quite troublesome at this time of year, as after spending winter inside they can be quite boisterous. Because of this it wasn’t a huge surprise to hear Zoe ended up having to frantically herd the marauding bovines back over to the right side of the fence this morning after they sneakily burst through it during a battery change over.