AN Oxfordshire nature reserve has won a national prize for improvements which have seen otters, bats and hundreds of birds colonise new wetlands.

RSPB Otmoor created a lagoon, 30 islands and 20 shallow pools to attract wildlife to the reserve at Beckley, near Oxford.

Otmoor is now considered to be one of the most important places for scarce wetland birds, such as snipe and redshanks, in southern England.

It has attracted hundreds more birds including widgeon, teal and golden plovers during the winter and even some endangered bitterns.

It scooped the prize for community improvement at the Biffaward Awards.

The site, in a tributary of the River Ray, beat off competition from a Rutland wood project and a reedbed scheme at RSPB Minsmere in Suffolk to win the £2,000 prize.

Site manager David Wilding said: “It’s fantastic. We were totally surprised to win the award.

“We showed the judge around earlier this year and he thought what we’d created was really good for wildlife.

“Otmoor is now one of the best birdwatching areas in Oxfordshire and it’s getting better and better.

“We’re also attracting more wildlife and more wildfowl and starting to get sightings of otters on the reserve which is really nice.”

Mr Wilding said the reserve has had six sightings of otters this year. These were the first in more than a decade and came after the creation of a 22-acre reed bed stocked with rudd fish.

Last month the Environment Agency said otters had now returned to the Thames, Cherwell, Ock and Thame.

Improvement works were carried out at Otmoor last year after the reserve won a £50,000 Biffaward grant in 2007. It is run by waste firm Biffa from taxes it pays on landfill.

Ian Lewington, county recorder for the Oxford Ornithological Society, who has visited the site for 25 years, said: “The RSPB have done a great job. Because of the nature of the developments they’ve opened up new areas of the site and for the number of different species you can spot there it is pretty much the best in the county.”

He said he hoped bitterns would stay at the site to breed.

“Even if breeding birds don’t come back it will be a great place for passenger birds.”