Few readers will know of the prominent Russian bird researcher Helena Rogacheva. One of her two sons, Evgeny Syroechkovskiy junior, may be more widely known because of his work on Spoon-billed Sandpipers Calidris pygmaea and the conservation of Arctic flora and fauna; but it was Helena Rogacheva and her husband, Evgeny Syroechkovskiy senior, who instilled an early interest in birds and geography into their son when they took him to the northern regions of Siberia from an early age. Helena carried him in a specially made rucksack.