1. Wetlands belong to the globally most threatened habitats, and organisms depending on them are of conservation concern. Wetland destruction and quality loss may affect negatively also boreal breeding ducks in which habitat selection often needs balancing between important determinants of habitat suitability. In Finland duck population trajectories are habitat-specific, while the reasons behind are not known. 2. In this research, the balance of nest predation risk and invertebrate food abundance in boreal breeding ducks was studied in Finland at 45 lakes and ponds in 2017 and 2018. Nest predation experiments were conducted with artificial nests followed by wildlife cameras during seven days. Invertebrates were sampled from the study water bodies using emergence and activity traps. Duck pairs and broods were also surveyed from these and 18 additional water bodies. 3. The wildlife camera results indicate that predation risk was higher in the water bodies surrounded by agricultural land than forestland. Ponds (seasonal, beaver and man-made) had lower nest predation risk and they were also more invertebrate-rich habitats than permanent lakes. In addition, artificial nests further away from water bodies had higher survival than shoreline nests. Habitat use of duck pairs (prior to nesting) was not associated with invertebrate food, but duck broods preferred habitats rich in food. 4. High nest predation pressure in shorelines of especially agricultural landscapes may contribute the declining population trends of ducks in Finland. Controlling predators would be an important conservation action to improve duck breeding success. This research underlines the benefits of the availability of different water body types for the breeding ducks. There is an urgent need to pay attention to protecting seasonal ponds, while the lack of flooded waters may be mitigated by favouring beavers or man-made ponds.

Wildlife cameras have emerged over the recent years as an effective research tool for collecting various types of data on wild animals, and they are used increasingly also in avian studies. However, choosing the best method to collect data depends on the aim of the research and the characteristics of the target species and its habitat. Here, we compared the performance of game cameras taking images by passive infrared motion sensitive (PIR) and time-lapse triggering in gathering occurrence and relative abundance data of the taiga bean goose (Anser fabalis fabalis) in peatlands across Finland in 2020-2021. We found the time lapse trigger mode to be more efficient in collecting data on goose presence than PIR triggering. However, there was no significant difference in the goose numbers between the two trigger modes. We also found the capture probability and relative abundance to vary between years, but this could be attributed to random inter-annual variation. In general, we find time lapse to be a more suitable method to study elusive ground dwelling birds like the taiga bean goose due to fewer required visits to camera sites compared to motion triggered cameras that may produce a lot of empty images due to false triggering. This reduces the disturbance to the geese and other wildlife during the sensitive breeding period.