On joining the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust as a researcher in the late 1970s, I was recruited to continue the long-term study of Bewick's swans wintering at the trust's HQ in the south-west of England. This led to a PhD on the swans' migration strategies but, with the Cold War limiting information exchange with Eastern Europe, little was known in the West about the swans on their breeding grounds in the Russian Arctic.

Prospects for travel within the Soviet Union improved with perestroika, so for my Churchill Fellowship in 1987 I aimed to follow the swans on migration, and to meet scientists studying them at staging sites in the USSR. An expedition to Iceland was also included, to observe whooper swans in their breeding range. Friendships made during my Fellowship resulted in my returning to Estonia for more detailed observations and to Iceland for what became a whooper swan population study. From 1991 we made numerous visits to the Russian Arctic for an Anglo-Russian study of Bewick's swan breeding biology, which extended communication by individuals involved in their conservation to a flyway level.

Although now semi-retired, I'm still actively involved in swan conservation internationally.