David Jarrett:  Report on placement at LUOMUS, the Helsinki Museum of Natural History

As part of the doctoral program DurhamARCTIC, I had the opportunity to do a placement at LUOMUS, the Helsinki Museum of Natural History, which functions as an independent research institution functioning under the University of Helsinki. The Leverhulme Trust funded the placement, which provided a fantastic opportunity to gain direct insight into avian conservation in an Arctic country.

LUOMUS run the Finnish breeding bird monitoring program and carry out research into all aspects of Finnish Ornithology. In time spent at LUOMUS I attended lab meetings and presented my work at a lab meeting. I discussed various research projects with staff and students at LUOMUS, sharing experiences and ideas from different perspectives.

I was officially hosted at LUOMUS by Professor Aleksi Lehikoinen, who runs an ornithology lab group. For my work in Finland, Aleksi worked with Tuomas Seimola from LUKE, the Finnish Environment Agency, to arrange for me to have access to some large mire sites and farmland in North Karelia, Eastern Finland. Tuomas has worked extensively in the farmland areas on bird monitoring and research projects for many years, but there is very little data on bird density or abundance in the blanket bog areas, many of the sites I visited had never been surveyed for birds before.

LUOMUS and LUKE were particularly interested in the colonisation of Black-tailed Godwit of Eastern Finland – unlike many wader species in Europe, Black-tailed Godwit are expanding their breeding range in Fenno-Scandia and Iceland. I recorded numbers of breeding pairs of Black-tailed Godwits and other bird species at each of the mire sites and provided the survey data to my collaborators. I am also using the survey data in my own PhD research – I deployed acoustic recorders at these sites, and am comparing vocalisation behaviour of wader species at these sites with sites in the UK.