This might get a bit technical... but you may have noticed that the tractor is now out ‘topping’ the grassland fields on the reserve. We normally start doing this at the end of June but with all the rain we’ve had this year the fields have been far too wet for us to venture out onto. Owain managed to get the tractor stuck over on Flood at the beginning of August, demonstrating just how wet some areas of the reserve still are. We normally top the fields twice, with the first top that we are doing at the moment being followed by another later on in September. This first top, literally just takes the top off the grass, encouraging lusher growth which keeps the cows happy, as well as encouraging the grass to grow outwards (tillering) giving better coverage. It also allows us to knock back thistle and rush growth to make sure these plants don’t end up dominating the drier and wetter areas of the fields respectively.
After this first top the cows can then munch away at the grass, grazing some areas down short, leaving some areas longer, trampling areas to create muddy patches and leaving cow pats which cause localised soil enrichment. These cow pat areas encourage the growth of dense lush tussocks which the redshank on Otmoor seem to favour as nest sites.
During the first top we leave wetter areas of the field that may still be being used by snipe and also leave some other patches of longer vegetation which are great as cover for the small mammals, hares and skylarks.
The second top later in the year, again in conjunction with the cows will give us the right range of habitats within the grassland fields to keep the lapwing, redshank, snipe and curlew happy when they return to breed next year. They all require slightly different conditions for nesting and so we do our best to satisfy them all.