The Fowl's Pill, Otmoor, Oxfordshire
As the first flush of spring flowers passes, a lucky few will see one
of spring’s truly spectacular sights: the mass flowering of
Water-violet.
This plant tells us much about the condition of the
modern landscape, and about ponds too. It's most pressing need is for
clean, unpolluted water. Not surprisingly it has fared badly in the
modern landscape as all pervasive pollution from towns and farming has
subtly poisoned its fragile habitat.Never really a river plant, it now
only survives in those places in the rich lowlands where ponds and
ditches are protected from the worst excesses of the fertiliser and
sewage effluent that contaminate so much of our freshwater.
But it also tells us something about ponds too: because, like a
surprising number of water plants, it prefers ponds that dry out. And
for many ponds, and their wildlife, it provides a reminder that summer
drying is entirely natural, a phenomenon that a remarkably large
proportion of freshwater plants and animals are adapted too.
And this spring has seen a supreme display of this beautiful plant at
the evocatively named ‘Fowl’s Pill’, on Otmoor. Here the
Water-violet's white flowers symbolise both a figurative and literal
purity – this pond is so wonderful because it is protected from the
pollution that is commonplace in the surrounding ‘green and pleasant
land’. And this purity makes the Fowl’s Pill one of Britain’s most
outstanding wildlife ponds, a true reminder of what our ponds should
be.
The Fowl’s Pill sits at the heart of the Defence Infrastructure
Organisation’s Otmoor Range - one of the many military training
grounds across the country that have protected wonderful wildlife
sites from the worst effects of industrial agriculture and
development. As one of the country’s most important freshwater
wildlife sites it has been carefully watched-over through the years by
local land owners, and by the Pond Conservation team. With the support
of the Environment Agency, Natural England and others, this most
beautiful of ponds looks in as good a shape now as when we first saw
it more than 20 years ago.
That the pond and its exceptional wildlife survives is entirely due to
the use of its surroundings as a military range. In a place where
farming could never become the industrialised activity which now
dominates most of the landscape, the land has been subject only to
gentle grazing by a few hardy beasts. This old-fashioned kind of
farming, long overtaken by modern practice elsewhere, continues to add
to, rather than detract from, the variety of life.
