Lea MacNally

Lea MacNally was born and brought up around Fort Augustus, learning his field craft from the country men around him – shepherds, gamekeepers and stalkers. He had a wild, mischievous streak, with a dangerous passion for climbing trees (later put to good use in his studies of golden eagles and other raptors), or occasionally falling in the river or the canal! He was to continue his schooling in wartime Glasgow (hardly a safer environment!) before seeing the last few years of the Second War in the army, both at home and abroad.

When he returned to Fort Augustus he became a professional deer stalker. In 1950 he moved to Culachy Estate above Loch Ness, richly wooded on its lower slopes and bisected by General Wade’s military road through the Corrieyairack to Strathspey. ‘Such variety of terrain ensured a similar variety, indeed richness, of wildlife, both winged and four-legged, from those of wooded glen to those of the high tops’. Lea kept a diary of his wildlife encounters and, armed with a camera he soon developed considerable skills as a photographer.

A quiet-spoken and modest man, his slide talks became so popular that he next contemplated writing a book. Encouraged by the monks of Fort Augustus Abbey ‘Highland Year’ was published in 1968. From the onset of winter, through spring and summer to ‘the month of the roaring’ the life and habits of deer, fox, wildcat, eagle, buzzard and raven are described and photographed as only a man schooled in the lonely expanses of hill and glen could. ‘Here are some of the best deer photographs I have ever seen’, added one critic. Indeed that same year they were to win Lea MacNally an award from the British Deer Society.