AN urgent appeal has been launched to raise almost £300,000 to help provide a home for thousands of migrating geese.

The RSPB needs to raise the money by the end of this month in order to buy land adjacent to the Solway Firth, to which more than 40,000 Svalbald barnacle geese migrate every winter.

The cash will allow the charity to expand its Mersehead reserve, where around a quarter of the birds settle, by 112 hectares.

Stuart Housden, Director of RSPB Scotland said: “RSPB Scotland Mersehead is an outstanding place for wildlife and now we have the opportunity to make it even bigger and better for some of Scotland’s rarest species, and the many others that make their home there.

“Throughout the year visitors to the reserve can experience the wonders of nature from the calls of skylarks in spring, and the tumbling display of breeding lapwings, to the iconic sight of the Svalbald barnacle geese arriving in huge numbers at this time of year.”

Those looking to donate cash to the appeal can do so at www.rspb.org.uk/merseheadappeal.

The fundraising plea came as more than 30,000 pink footed geese made the move to their new winter home elsewhere in the country.

The birds, which have flown around 750 miles from their summer breeding grounds in Greenland and Iceland, have taken up resident at the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Montrose Basin Wildlife Reserve.