Alf Robertson

The eagle opportunity occurred through Dick Balharry, then warden of Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve, and whom Robertson knew when the latter was a youngster in nearby Muirhead, Angus. Balharry had taken an orphan chick into his care after the mother became victim of the pesticide DDT, and later several times unsuccessfully attempted to release the young hen into the wild.

Balharry contacted Robertson, who seized on the opportunity provided by the hen. Apollo - so named after the then American moonshot - proved contented in captivity, preening herself when taking centre stage in one of Robertson's demonstrations on the food chain in the wild. Unable to have the hen mated naturally, Robertson further pioneered artificial insemination of her, with the outcome being the first successful breeding of a golden eagle in captivity, where the mother hatched and reared the chick herself. Eggs had previously been hatched and the chicks reared in incubators, but no-one had succeeded in fostering the necessary trust a hen required to rear a chick herself.

Alfred Fyffe Robertson was born in the farm house of Logie in Lochee, Dundee, sixth child of farmer and haulage contractor Edward Robertson and his wife Joan Cloudley Kennedy. He quickly established himself as someone with polymathic tendencies, excelling in art and sport, particularly rugby, at Harris Academy, and gaining a simply astonishing knowledge of wildlife at an early age, particularly in ornithology.

As a youngster, he kept and studied canaries, moving on in adult life to pigeons, pheasants and poultry, especially bantams. Rare breeds held particular fascination, and throughout his life he studied how genetic make-up might be perpetuated.

His talent for observation made him a welcome student in fine art at Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art in Dundee. His intention was to take up a teaching post proffered by a colleague in England, but onset of war in 1939 saw him needed in the family business extracting and transporting specialist timber for building wooden minesweepers, and he left art study.

He covered many parts of Scotland working as a timber contractor, and when, in Bute in 1964, constant rain threatened to put paid to extracting timber on the hills near Ettrick Bay, he bought up 500 yards of 2ft-gauge rail from a Glasgow scrapyard, located a locomotive and wagons, and single-handedly built the line down a hillside to connect the logging area with timber lorries. Apart from the one-time Rothesay tramway, Robertson's railway was the only line ever built on the island.

His passion for wildlife proved undiminished, and even as a forestry contractor, Robertson continued to breed birds, exhibiting at local and national bird shows. At home in Monikie in Angus, he had a virtual private zoo that included a monkey, many birds and a roe deer raised from a day-old kid. A chance meeting in 1967 with Dundee wildlife artist Len Fullerton, an old friend, gave Robertson the news that Dundee District Council intended to open a wildlife centre with a schools education programme on conservation.

Robertson was a ready candidate, and over the years he personally designed and built aviaries and enclosures, as well as displaying his considerable expertise in drystane dyking, focusing on the old walled garden of Camperdown House as a centre for conserving and displaying Scottish indigenous wildlife.

Camperdown proved Robertson's metier, and he enthusiastically developed an environmental education programme for schools, gaining the attention of youngsters through live animal "assistants", and with his wife Betty providing the admin, building up a wildlife centre and children's zoo. For services to wildlife conservation in Dundee, Robertson was awarded the now-discontinued British Empire Medal in 1978.

Robertson, small and wiry, retained his fitness all his life. As a young man, he played a ferociously attacking game as scrum-half for Harris Academy FPs, gaining the eye of selectors when he turned out in representative rugby for Midlands. An older generation of rugby aficionados still believe that, but for the war, he would have gained a Scotland jersey.

He retired in 1985, but not before Dundee made one last call on his talents. Could he, they asked, produce a wooden sculpture of a Highland cow and calf for presentation to their twin city of Wurzburg? And how quickly could he sculpt the piece? He did, in record time.

He and his wife retired to the family home in Monikie in 1985 to a continuing interest in wildlife and conservation. He would endear himself to his grandchildren by drawing animals and birds in the condensation on car windows as they were leaving him.

In later years, he developed dementia, and was cared for in Montrose. But almost until the end, he was able through a mobility scooter to make daily visits to a nearby duck pond to check on the lives of swans and cygnets.

He was predeceased by his wife Elizabeth (Betty Smith) in 1989, and is survived by his children Alf, Alan and Elizabeth; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. By GORDON CASELY