Lapwing in North Karelia

North Karelia, Finland, June 2023

It has been hot and dry for weeks. It's approaching midsummer in North Karelia, Finland, a stone's throw from the border with Russia. Either side of the road are field after field of parched, bare, stony ground that appear to afford nature no respite whatsoever: there are no wet features, no wader scrapes with sculpted muddy edges, no mix of sward heights, no cover to speak of, no nothing. If these fields appeared on twitter they would be condemned as ecological deserts: a metaphor for the failure of society to value that which is truly precious; totemic of another failed agricultural policy, and a blank canvas for the rewilders to set themselves upon.

The only problem with all that is the Lapwing broods. These fields are generously sprinkled with them. They stand out like a sore thumbs against the bare earth, mangy-looking half-grown things, adults jumpy and attentive nearby. Here and there are odd piles of crumpled black and white in the fields: felled birds I guess from a distance, they must be collapsing with starvation in the heat. But they’re just piles of rubbish, some kind of discarded baling tape.

However these fields might look to an interlopers eye, they are effective at illustrating an important point regarding wader conservation: where waders do well in farmed landscapes, it's rarely a consequence of particularly brilliant piece of agri-environment legislation: the stroke of a pen or tap of keyboard hasn't done much for these birds. The mowing, cutting and ploughing dates and field rotations the farmers follow here just happen to suit the birds. As the snow-melt has moved earlier in the year Lapwing are able to nest earlier, affording them more time to re-nest following failure, and the population has boomed. These fields are carved into the northern boreal forest, which we might expect to harbour predators, but the winters are cold and long, and there will be relatively meagre pickings for generalist predators over-winter. And the farmers here treasure their woodland grouse hunting in the winter, and so they do their best to kill foxes or martens that might endure the winter.

So, for now at least, the Lapwing thrive here.