Dave Dick

Dave was born in Giffnock on the south side of Glasgow in 1951. He was one of four children. His mother is living in Fife, aged 92; his father, an office worker, died in 1975. Both parents grew up in the city of Glasgow. He can trace his family, on both sides, to the Glasgow area, back to the early 19th century.

He grew up in the village of Uplawmoor on the Renfrewshire/Ayrshire border. With a deep interest in nature from his childhood, he spent his early years exploring the woods and fields around his home – and in particular, fishing on Loch Libo.

Holidays in the Berwickshire fishing village of St Abbs and in Cowal visiting his grandmother and elderly aunts, helped add to what he sees now as an idyllic countryside upbringing.

Commuting to his secondary school education at Hutchesons’ Boys’ Grammar, in the centre of Glasgow, introduced him to city life – and a whole new set of accents and lifestyles.

A BA degree in Geography and Geology from Strathclyde University in 1972 was somehow obtained, despite a growing obsession with and involvement in folk music, particularly American country blues.

In 1973 Dave set off with the young woman who was to become his first wife, on the “Hippy Trail” to the East in a small van. Their adventures took them all over Europe, through the wilds of former Yugoslavia, all over mainland Greece and eventually into Turkey. Back home after a cold winter working in a factory in Amsterdam, Dave enrolled as a student for a second degree. This was an M.I.Biol in Ecology and Animal Behaviour, paid for by working as a laboratory technician at Paisley College of Technology and studying on “day release”

At the end of this time a chance encounter with the young Eddi Reader, lead to the formation of the folk and blues trio “Pigmeat” with his close friend Angus Aird. Immediate success on the folk circuit ensued and he turned professional musician. Inevitably, the highly talented and ambitious Edna moved on.

After answering an advertisement in the RSPB’s Birds magazine, Dave found himself employed as a contract surveyor working on the 1981 UK Peregrine survey in Argyll. This in turn lead to further golden eagle and barnacle goose monitoring contracts – in Perthshire, Argyll, Islay, Lewis and Harris before getting his first full time RSPB job, as the Scottish Species Protection and Investigations Officer in January 1984.

His first book Wildlife Crime is mainly about his work as an RSPB Investigations Officer, in the 1980s and 1990s.

He took early retirement from the RSPB at the end of 2006. He now lives in Dumfriesshire with his partner Eryl, where he plays the guitar, writes and walks the countryside. He is writing a novel and has become obsessed with fly fishing for trout.