Ribble goes Solway (and a bit further).

Pale-bellied Brent Geese at Wig Bay on Loch Ryan, 3 January 2013.

 Three Ribble birders - Dave Mallet, Graham Clarkson and myself left Preston just after 6 am yesterday, arriving on the Solway as the Barnacle Geese were leaving their roost on the Colvend merse. 

We spent the morning checking the Southerness area of Dumfries & Galloway for the Red-breasted Goose and Todd's Canada Goose seen the previous day. It was late morning before we found the Red-breasted Goose near the golf club, but the geese were very flighty and after a few hours of intense goose-spotting (we did have time to watch a Short-eared Owl briefly) we decided to move on for a bit of variety.

Dave and Graham watching Pale-bellied Brent Geese at Loch Ryan.

The hour and a half journey from the outer Solway to Stranraer turned out to be very worthwhile indeed. Our first stop at Ryan Bay was excellent: Great Crested and Slavonian Grebes (we saw at least twenty of the latter during the afternoon), 2 Black Guillemots, 2 Razorbills, 25 Red-throated Divers and a single Great Northern Diver. Moving to the western side of Loch Ryan we watched 94 Pale-bellied Brent Geese in the fields in Wig Bay (where a flock of 60 Twite flitted around) and our Scaup tally rose to over six hundred, added several more Common Scoter, a fine drake Long-tailed Duck to add to the female seen earlier, many Red-breasted Mergansers and surprisingly few Eiders. Being high tide we saw relatively few waders but the leucistic Oystercatcher was present.
A few flocks of Pink-footed Geese totalling over 1300 reminded us that we still had time to look for the Greenland Whitefronted Geese so we headed to West Freugh, finding just eleven birds. However this section of the trip turned out to be the highlight of the day for me personally as we counted no less than seven Hen Harriers over the MOD grasslands, three were stunning male birds, the last arriving to roost at 16.30 hours. Merlin, 400+ Greylag Geese and some Roe Deers were seen here too. Large flocks of geese could be seen heading to roost somewhere at Luce Bay at dusk (I presume they were Pink-footed), 4 Whooper Swans and 60 more Greenland Whitefronts flew over calling just as we were leaving for the long journey back to Lancashire.