William MacGillivray

The man who has been hailed as Scotland’s greatest field naturalist’, and as ‘the greatest and most original ornithological genius . . . that this island has produced’ had an unlikely and inauspicious start in life.

William Macgillivray was born illegitimate in Aberdeen in 1796. Little is known of his mother and a few months later his father joined the army, never to return. At the age of three, William was despatched to live with an uncle, Roderick Macgillivray, who farmed Northton in Harris.

In the Hebrides ‘the solitude of Nature was my school’and he spent every spare moment roaming the hills and beaches. Whatever it was in his teacher at Leverburgh that gave him such an insatiable appetite for learning and industry - that was to remain with him to his dying day - will never be known.

Back in Aberdeen at the age of twelve, he was enrolled into University, a circumstance not as remarkable then as it might be considered nowadays. After his Master of Arts he turned to medicine, walking home to Harris each summer vacation! ‘I have reaped most advantage from solitary travelling’ Macgillivray confessed but committed private thoughts to his diaries.