I have escaped from Cuddesdon and I am a free man. Released from the agricultural desert of the Cuddesdon countryside, today I decided that I would indulge myself in birds. It was a beautiful blue early May morning, I went to Otmoor and it was fabulous. I didn’t spend any time doing photography, just had a nice walk and pointed the camera at whatever came close, I concentrated more on taking in the spectacle of spring. It was the sounds that hit me first – Whitethroats, Chiffchaffs, Lesser Whitethroats, Sedge Warblers and Linnets all singing away. A brief purr of a Turtle Dove, Swallows and Swifts overhead.
I immersed myself in the sounds of wet meadows in spring: drumming Snipe, the vibrating whirr of their outer tail feathers, backed up with a symphony of displaying Lapwings and Redshank: 
Reed Buntings were calling and singing from the trackside bushes:
Grasshopper Warblers reeled away in the scrub:
Furtherdown the main track a tail-less Cuckoo flew along the hedgerow. Cetti’s Warblers belted out their frantic song. I joined Jon Uren for the walk to the screens, we picked out a Ringed Plover out on the mud and Jon filled me in on what I had been missing out on for the last 8 years. The only common warbler species that we didn’t record today was Garden Warbler, the reserve was otherwise full of warblers bursting with spring hormones and belting out their songs. Natural wildlife in all it’s spring glory. I could get used to this.