The ”Calidris mission”, postcard from Finland’s field trip 2025
After a great week on the field in Dümmer and Lower Elbe (Lower Saxony, Germany) to meet the local teams from LIFE IP GrassBirdHabitat and LIFE Godwit Flyway for grassland bird conservation, we headed north for a three-week mission in Finland with Jimmy Allain and Julie Deschamps.
We arrived in Oulu, where we were warmly welcomed by the local team, Sami Timonen, Jaana Rintala, and Esko Pasanen, with whom we captured Black-tailed godwits.
Soon joined by the Finnish teams of HABITRACK, Markus Piha, Tuomas Seimola, and Valeria Valanne, we then headed to higher latitudes. The goal: to locate nests of Spotted redshanks and find female ruffs in breeding areas to equip them with GPS devices.
With help from Finnish researchers already working there, we knew exactly which area to explore. Despite that, Spotted redshanks proved extremely hard to find — mainly because of their discreet behavior, the constant brightness, and the large size of suitable habitats that needed thorough inspection. After several days of unsuccessful attempts, we decided to head north — all the way to Finnish Lapland — to focus the rest of the mission on female Ruffs.
The second part of our mission started by testing our off-nest capture method: female Ruffs can be sensitive to both capture and tagging.
Peatland walking is a sport of its own — long hikes in chest waders under a midnight sun… But the beauty of the landscape made the fatigue melt away.
The work was intense but deeply rewarding. And we were just getting started.
Once we had surveyed all the areas suggested by our Finnish colleagues, we played our final card: a female ruff tagged earlier this year in the Moëze-Oléron Reserve had recently sent GPS signals from northeastern Finland, near the Norwegian border. We headed up there to investigate — and weren’t disappointed. Golden plovers, Long-tailed skuas greeted us… and finally, more ruffs.
This final capture session wrapped up the ”Calidris mission” — an extraordinary experience in an incredible setting.
Guilhem Tellier
Student in Master 2 Environmental Sciences at La Rochelle University
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