Festival celebrates return of wintering wild geese

A 10-day festival is celebrating the annual influx of tens of thousands of wild geese to winter on the Solway Firth estuary.

The Wild Goose Festival, first held in 2020, includes birdwatching instruction sessions, guided walks and dawn and dusk roost watches.

The festival was inspired by the migratory route of barnacle geese from Svalbard in the Arctic to Dumfries and Galloway.

The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust is a partner in the event and manages a nature reserve at Caerlaverock on the firth.

Last month, reserve staff said they were excited but anxious about the return of geese this year after flocks were devastated by avian flu in 2021.

When the reserve was set up in 1971, the barnacle goose population was 3,700, but that number had risen to 40,000 by last year.