Bobby Tulloch

Like all Shetlanders, Bobby Tulloch was raised a crofter and fisherman, and, like many, he was also a talented musician. But he was also a gifted artist, an expert naturalist, a stunning photographer, a storyteller, a broadcaster, a writer and a wonderful companion so full of knowledge and humour.

His interest in natural history was kindled early, perhaps from his Grandfather, whom Bobby remembered as having ‘an alert and natural curiosity [bringing] him a sound knowledge of most of the creatures with which he shared his environment.’ It soon became obvious that Bobby was going to go further when, as a toddler, he was found asleep in bed, clutching a rather smelly puffin corpse that he had found on the shore!

He became apprenticed to a baker and, after national service at home and in Hong Kong, Bobby returned to his native Yell to resume his trade and operate the island’s mobile shop. Although Bobby had no formal training, George Waterston so admired the depth of his self-acquired knowledge that in 1964, he offered Bobby a job as the RSPB’s Representative in the Shetland Isles.

Bobby Tulloch became a national celebrity in 1967 when he found a snowy owl nest on Fetlar with three eggs! Under Bobby’s watchful eye, this first ever breeding pair in Britain went on to rear five chicks from a clutch of seven eggs. With Dennis Coutts, Bobby once tried to photograph the parent owls up close - dressed as a pantomime horse! Bobby was the rear end and rather fearful of the attentions of a Shetland stallion in the vicinity!