Winter Migrants

As autumn slowly turns to winter, there is very little to see on the Ock - most of the surviving water voles (if any) now spend most of their time in their borrows, the adult insects have died and leaving their young to overwinter as eggs, nymphs or lava and the summer migrants - (warblers, swallows and hobbies) have returned to Africa.
Whilst a few winter migrants like redwings will hang around the hedges near the Ock a better place them is Otmoor.
Frequently featured in this blog, Otmoor is an expanse of meadows and wetlands just north of Oxford:
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It is here that dozens of lapwing come to spend the winter:.
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But the real stars are the starlings, with winter migrants from northern Europe and as far away  boosting their numbers to tens of thousands, making their flocks just before dusk one of the season spectacles in Oxfordshire.
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