Nature / Bobby Tulloch’s Shetland comes to life in new audiobook

A CLASSIC among Shetland wildlife publications, out of print for many years, has been made accessible again as a four-disc audiobook.

Originally published in 1988, an unabridged version of Bobby Tulloch’s Shetland: An Islander, His Islands and Their Wildlife, narrated by his niece Caroline Keith, has now been published by Yell based writer and naturalist Adrian Brockless.

One of Shetland most renowned naturalist and prolific wildlife writers, the late Bobby Tulloch became famous when, in 1967, he discovered the UK’s first recorded breeding pair of snowy owls on Fetlar.

In his writing Tulloch shares with his readers the wild Shetland he has watched since childhood, always discovering something new with each unfolding of the seasons.

Brockless said: “Tulloch’s book is an unaffected story of Shetland’s wildlife which is interwoven with the rapid evolution of island life, particularly in the era of North Sea oil and gas and other technological developments.

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“It’s a story told by a fine and sensitive intelligence, mindful of the reality that human beings are as much a part of the natural world as the other creatures with which we define and share it.”

Praising the quality and depth of Tulloch’s writing, Brockless added: “Bobby Tulloch invites you to love the natural world and it is through this invitation – what one might also call an expression of love – that our understanding can be transformed and we can be brought to see the natural world as something precious; something upon which harm can be inflicted in ways that run far deeper than the material harm we consider bad because of its negative consequences.”

The audiobook also contains arrangements of two tunes written by Tulloch, One Hundred Shetland Islands and Island Lullaby (the latter co-written with his sister Mary Ellen), arranged by Brockless and performed by the Nova String Quartet.

The audiobook is available from Brough Stores in Burravoe and online throughout the UK via mail order here. There is also a Bobby Tulloch audiobook Facebook page here.

A book with reminiscences of those who knew Bobby Tulloch, Bobby the Bird Man – edited by Jonathan Wills – was published a few years ago.

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