Cranes, roe deer, fox - OH MY!

One way cool thing about where I work now is that there are several long term projects that have been going on for >20 years, so that practically anyone who has touched foot here has been out to volunteer on one of the projects in some manner.  The roe deer project is one that has been going on For Ever (it seems).  They have been collaring or marking fawns and adults for >20 years and have this huge rich database tracing the families of deer that live in this area.  Roe deer are facinating little ungulates.  They tend to have twins and actually stash them and leave them unlike moose calves who stay at their mothers heal from birth. Because the roe deer stash their young, it makes our job tricky to find them.  You need lots of eyes and to walk searching in the bush hoping that you will not step on the fawn or that you are fast enough to tackle it when it does finally bolt out from the bush its been hiding in.  If you get them within 1 day of birth, they tend not to run.

 The project here captures fawns, puts expandable and breakaway collars on them, draws blood, and ear marks them along with taking measurements etc.  The breakaway collars will basically degrade away and fall off their necks before they are 1 year old (in theory).

Besides roe deer, there are also people working on cranes - The cranes cause a lot of crop damage, particularly when they come in the thousands in the fall. Cranes are kind of territorial - or rather, they have their family's home area and if there is a pair of cranes there, there isn't likely another family in the same field.  Lovisa is a PhD student who is trying to track the birds and find out where they migrate to during the winter.  So, part of the challenge is to tag the chicks right after they hatch, before they get their flight wings.  The challenge with this is you need to be fast.  From the second you see the birds in the field, you need to move.  What happens is we drive along looking for birds with chicks.
We see them in a field and the chase is on...Its kind of tricky and you hope that the field they are in has been harvested already - but you drive through the ditch onto the field and directly at the birds trying to get between them and edge of the field or forest.  Once sort of close, even before the trcuk comes to a stop, you jump out of the vehicle and start running.  You run at the chicks (very important you know which is the chick from adult).  The chicks can't fly, the adults eventually fly away and then circle while waiting for you to finish.  But, hopefully you will get to them before they disappear - and in high grass or forest, they disappear QUICK.  They will duck down and poof they are gone and just like those fawns they hide and now you have to search for them.  Its crazy.  If you can corner them they will puff up and try to peck at your eyes.  They know where your eyes are and they aim for them!

Once captured, keep the head behind your body and start to take measurements and put the backpack GPS on it. They put the legs bands on it that identify through color and pattern where the bird was initially captured .  Good to go!

One of the most frustrating projects that I see Grimsö has been doing for a while is trying to look at red fox impact on roe deer, interactions with lynx, and predation threat on other creatures here in Sweden (mostly a huge concern for competition with arctic fox - but not in our area).  What is frustrating to me or for me is how freaking hard it is in Sweden to capture a red fox.  Sweden is extremely extremely extremely conscious of animal welfare - to the hindrance of progress when it comes to scientific studies of wildlife.  Everywhere Ive been thus far, most people equate wildlife studies to laboratory studies on mice - which is so unfair to compare with.  We do not work in a lab and trying to make laboratory standards exist in the field is ridiculous expectation.  There are plenty of capture methods in existence in the world, but Sweden is very specific about what can and cannot be used, unfortunately removing some of the most effective and efficient methods of capture in order to enforce those laboratory "expectations" - Anyway, its too much detail for this simple blog - lets just say that the methods of capture here in Sweden are really inefficient compared to USA.  OR the foxes here in Sweden are simply behaviorally way different than USA (could be both).

One of the fun things about foxes is that they stink or rather their pee stinks.  They really smell bad and to get them out of the trap you really have to consider your own clothing. Gustaf has these coveralls that are his trapping clothing because the smells just permeate and will not leave once set.

Ive met the real Santa and guess what - He's Finnish!

In my last blog I mentioned how Finland claims to be the home location for Santa.  That would be Ravaniemi.  This is the 5th time Ive crossed the Arctic circle on foot in the 3rd country.  Its also the second Santa home Ive visited.

This was the first time I really can recall being incredibly giddy while visiting a santa.  Santa's at malls have NOTHING on this guy.  There was something that was totally real about this man and the atmosphere and the beard and the clothing - it was all superb.

Oddly enough, I have now met 3 people who are terrified of Santa.  Tuija and her sister do not like Santa and refused to get within 10 feet of him.  Maybe terrified is the wrong word, but they didn't want anything to do with him.  They were however, very encouraging of me.  So much so that I got photos and video (if I can ever get the web site to work) of my visit with Santa.  The entire conversation was recorded.

My first impression of Santa was "Holy crap your shoes and socks rock!"  That is what made this Santa the best Ive ever met.

This place was very cool.  Open 364 days of the year, everyone can come and talk to Santa for free.  Santa, I think speaks 5 languages at least.  His elvish helpers are from around the world...I thought the elf I met was Russian, but Tuija says likely not.  I haven't met many Finnish people so maybe he's just got what I would equate to a Russian accent but he's really Finnish and I just can't tell.  No matter, I like to believe he was Russian - and tall, very unelvish.

Diagram explaining how Santa slows down the Earth's rotation
in order to make his deliveries.