John Morton Boyd

1925-88. Ecologist and conservationist, author of The Highlands and Islands (1964, with F. Fraser Darling) and The Hebrides (1990, with his son, Ian Lamont Boyd). A pioneer of nature conservation north of the border, scientist, traveller, romantic and ardent lover of nature.

Son of an Ayshire master builder married to a textile designer, educated locally. Original plans to become an engineer interrupted by wartime service in RAF, after which contact with nature on camping trips led him to enrol at Glasgow University reading geology and zoology under his mentor, Mautice Yonge, going on to study earthworm and ecology in the Hebrides for a PhD.

Appointed the Nature Conservancy's first regional officer fo the West Highlands and Islands in 1957, becoming its Scottish Director 1971-85. Somehow combined busy life as a civil servant with travels to Jordan, Uganda and the Serengeti, Aldabra, Christmas Island and other ocean islands, which occupy half his memoirs. Much involved in reintroduction of sea-eagles, establishment of National Nature Reserves, impacts of North Sea oil and gas and other developments, as well as with the National Trust for Scotland, including its lecture cruises.

A man of many parts, writer, watercolourist, poet (he was among the few scientists with an honorary doctorate in literature), a compelling lecturer, a Church of Scotland Elder. FRSE (1966), CBE (1987). His posthumous memoirs are The Song of the Sandpiper (1999).