Dick Balharry

Dick Balharry was born and brought up in Muirhead (halfway between Cupar Angus and Dundee) with an insatiable curiosity about animals. He accumulated a menagerie of some 40 waifs and strays, some of which even bred in captivity. But he desperately wanted to learn more about them in the wild so at 12 years of age with a friend he made a first foray to the Highlands by bicycle. They camped anywhere along the route and ended up in Skye. He was entranced and determined sometime not just to reach the tops but to discover all the plants and animals that lived there.

Despite his menagerie and reading everything he could about wildlife, his parents, the minister and his head teacher decided that the boy should be an engineer. But he quickly realised that such a career was not for him and applied for a post as a gamekeeper in Argyll. Disliking killing things unnecessarily, Dick soon began to rescue orphaned animals but when his employer saw a tame fox cross the lawn, and Dick’s talking jackdaw began to criticise the head keeper, he felt he had to move on.

He moved to Glen Lyon to work under Archie Macdonald and received a better and more sympathetic training not just in keepering, but in field craft.
At 18 Dick was called up for National Service where he was able to travel extensively through Europe to National Parks and Nature Reserves. In Germany he began to carve out a professional career for himself in football. But a serious fracture to his arm put paid to his sporting future. Settling back into Glen Lyon he found himself acting as the eyes and ears for old Archie, which honed his awareness of all around.