12th July 1957 to 23rd August 2009

A remembrance of his life by Julia Welstead 

November 2009

Mike Madders, or Muckle as I always think of him, and I were bidie-ins from 1987 to the end of the 90’s and together we brought three boys – Miles and Dale and Fenning – into this world. I would like to share a few memories and thoughts in celebration of Mike’s life during the time that I knew him.

We met on Tiree in mid-winter, counting geese. I was completely blown away by this man’s individuality and charisma. He was a non-conformist in everything he did. He was wild and woolly. He had impossibly long limbs, huge knuckley hands and a Big Friendly Giant physique. He wore a raggedy old fisherman’s smock, gathered at the waist by his dog’s lead connected with a carabina, cord trousers that barely skimmed his ankles, an ancient wax jacket and wellies. And always a colourful neckerchief, tied jauntily off to the left.  With his startling blue eyes, long mane of hair and rakish grin, he was a thoroughly endearing rogue!

Through the late 80’s Mike and I travelled through East Africa, North Africa and Turkey together (this last with Phil Snow). We walked everywhere, exploring off beat tracks through game parks, climbing mountains the long way around, hitching rides in the open-air backs of trucks and generally going out of our way to seek adventure. Mike’s philosophy was that we should be on the predators’ menu just as much as any other animal. I was just young, daft and in love enough to go along with it!

Mike was living in Smiddy Cottage, at Lochdon on Mull in those days, with a pointer puppy called Gyre. He had just published Birds of Mull and created Saker Press, his publishing company, and was contemplating writing Where to Watch Birds in Scotland. We did this and several more books together and with other authors. As well as his vast knowledge, Mike also had the genius of being able to write clearly and concisely. I used to write bits, edit, proof read, and painstakingly create the maps with lettraset, but he was the mastermind.

With Phil Snow as yet another card up Mike’s very long sleeve, we had an artist who brilliantly illustrated all the books. And I got to listen in on some lively debate between an evolutionist and a creationist.

Mike also had RSPB work on eagles, and as warden of Mull, and his early study of hen harriers, and he was BTO rep. We were out on the hill most days. He was a brilliant naturalist. Of course he had gathered years of experience by the time I knew him, but it seemed to me that he was just born knowing about wildlife.  He instinctively knew where to look for nests, which skyline to scan, the best route up a hill or around a contour, which rock an adder would be under and where to cross the rivers. Whatever I do know in these realms, I learned from Mike. He taught purely by example, I don’t ever remember him waxing on about such things. We rarely made it to the top of a hill – the cairns are for the tourists, he used to say – and we’d contour around and go anywhere but along the foot-worn paths.

Of birds I especially learnt pretty much everything I know from Mike, and I was only able to better him once., when he was convinced there was a Bewick’s Swan across the loch and I thought it was a fertilizer sack. We had to drive round the loch to prove that I was right, but he conceded my victory with very good grace. 

Mike was a quiet man, but he could walk the hind legs off the proverbial donkey. It became a standing joke on Mull that if you asked Mike for a hill route (as folk often did) then whatever time estimate he told you, had to be doubled. He could lope along looking entirely at ease for many hours, his longedy legs eating up the miles. I got very fit over those years, and loved it, my only complaint being the number of times he would cross a stream in one easy stride, giving me the false illusion that it was quite narrow. I usually ended the day with wet feet!

Mike was considered the ‘bird man’ of Mull in those days and never a day went by without someone coming to our door to ask about a walking route or where best to see eagles or short-eared owls or even otters. Regularly, injured birds arrived in cardboard boxes or in the arms of a distressed driver. Mike would speak kindly and reassure the human and then we would have a bird to look after. Often it was a case of ringing the poor thing’s neck, but we did have an injured heron in our kitchen for a few days, and fed it fish until it felt better. We also had a freezer that mainly contained bird and small mammal carcasses – Mike always knew someone who would want them and we had to freeze them down and then wait for a Monday to post them.

For winter work Mike gave evening classes about birds on Mull, Coll and Tiree. He also had a go at working on the creel boats and the fish farms – but neither was really his thing. He hankered after John-the-Post’s job – how wonderful to be able to spend one’s days pottering around Mull birdwatching and delivering mail! But JtP loved it too, and it was a daily joke between them.

Other facets of Mike included his love of literature and music. The former mainly took the form of non-fiction texts and essays on philosophies many and various: Goethe, Coleridge and Tippett spring to mind. He was fascinated by the lives and writings of the world’s great achievers and unorthodox or controversial thinkers: Sir Laurens van der Post and Louis Mountbatten were favourites.

Mike’s taste in music went along the same lines: the avant-garde, the obscure, the experimental and the outstanding. Again, musicians and composers who spring to mind are Jan Garbarek, Don Cherry, Michael Tippett, Vaughin Williams, Wagner, Arvo Part, Gershwin, Mahler and Miles Davis. He was also an avid follower of The Archers of course! He didn’t have a TV.

In the kitchen, Mike loved to cook up a feast of garlicky spicey-ness – Indian, Mexican and African influences melding together in the pot. Having come from an upbringing of wholesome Scottish fare, this opened up a whole new culinary world for me. And the boys, when they came along, developed a broad palette, to the extent that Miles’ first birthday treat was a Mexican meal in Glasgow and by the time he was six, Mike was daring him to eat whole chillies.

Mike always said he didn’t want to settle down, he railed against the conventional route of marriage and family life. He was a man on a journey of exploration and wanted to spend his life energies on travelling the world, dreaming up questions and searching for answers. He was never happier than when out of doors, facing the elements and putting his hypotheses to the test. 

Meanwhile I was the conventional biological time bomb and in December 1991 Miles arrived. We had moved to Carnduncan on Islay and life as we knew it – counting geese through the winter, checking eagle eyries, finding harrier roosts and nests, monitoring corncrakes etc carried on as normal. Our house was a constant buzz of birdy folk coming and going. Baby Miles became a part of the scene, sitting in on RSPB meetings and crawling around next to Harrier and Lapwing chicks. 

While Miles was at the small and portable stage, I would cosy him into an old blue back-pack and Mike would hoist him up onto his back and take him for a lope across the hills. I remember Clive MacKay coming in one day and holding out a pale blue knitted baby bootie to me with a broad grin! “at last I’ve found a way to track Mike” he said with triumph. He had found Miles’ bootie on the scree under a local Golden eagle eyrie.

Dale and Fenning were born in 1995 and 1997. Mike had been becoming increasingly restless and, in 1997 hatched a plan for us all to live in Morocco for the winter. So, with Fenning still breast-feeding, Dale a fearless two year old and Miles a curious six, we set off in the old blue VW campervan, to drive to Morocco.

In northern Spain the van broke down and we left it in a garage and continued through Spain and into Morocco with what we could carry. Many folk might have turned for home, or at least waited for the van to be fixed, but Mike loved nothing better than to go adventuring so off we all went, hitching rides, walking, taking midnight trains and mountain buses with neither windows nor brakes, all the way down to Tarouadannt in southern Morocco. Mike was fearless, not in a brave or macho way, but just because fear did not occur to him. His confidence was infectious and I became intrepid because of him. He was never one to walk the well trodden path.

Mike was a maverick, independent of thought and action, leaning always toward the alternative opinion, the devil’s advocate of any debate. He would cast aside convenient conventions with a wave of his big-knuckled hands, and seek instead the harsher truths of life. For all that, he had a poetic, romantic soul.

I was always impressed with the focus, dedication and thoroughness of approach that Mike put into his work on birds. He loved them, from stonechats to Saker falcons, egrets to eagles, he loved and was fascinated by birds more than any other species (including human).

I’m so sad that Mike and Dan have gone from this world. Miles and Dale and Fenning have lost a father and a brother. I hope that by being here today they can glean a little more of their father’s extraordinary life, and connect with those who knew and worked with him, and feel proud to have his sharp mind, his adventurous spirit, his unorthodox ethos, his endless energy and his Big Friendly Giant physique in their genetic makeup.

These were my thoughts. Thank you for listening. JWW

Addendum 2019:

I read the above out at Mike’s memorial service in November 2009 and was very kindly asked, by Mike MacGrady who had organised the day, to take out the paragraph below, with respect for Mike’s parents who might be upset by it. But as his father stood up after me and said pretty much exactly this, I feel I can now include it.

‘Mike used to tell me that he didn’t want to become old, or to lose his fitness, health, thirst for adventure and thrill of risk. To this end he dared to seal his own fate by crawling through snake infested Australian grasslands, teetering on Portuguese cliffs and strolling through Indian tiger country before finally succumbing to nothing more exotic than a Scottish loch at the age of 52. But even in this he was psychic – the other thing he had told me more than once was that his only fear was of water, as he felt it would somehow be connected to his demise. He refused to learn to swim, even when I was imploring him to help me teach the boys, and he is the only person I’ve known who didn’t like the feel of sand on his feet, so never went barefoot.’