DR BRYAN Nelson, who played a key role in the creation of the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick and who is described as “the undisputed world expert on gannets”, has died. He was 83.

For three years in the early 1960s, he lived on the Bass Rock, the world’s largest colony of northern gannets, in a wooden hut within the ruined medieval chapel on the site of St Baldred’s sixth-century cell, working on gannet behaviour and ecology. This formed the basis of his 1978 gannet monograph.

Dr Nelson was honorary special ornithological adviser of the North Berwick-based conservation charity since 2013 after he stepped down from his role on the charity’s board of trustees. He was a trustee of the centre from 1997 to 2012.

The Seabird Centre flag has been flying at half-mast in his honour.

Tom Brock, chief executive of the Seabird Centre, paid tribute, saying: “As well as being the undisputed world expert on gannets, Bryan was a huge supporter of the Seabird Centre since its inception, long before opening in 2000.

“He was hugely proud of the Seabird Centre and its dedicated team of staff and volunteers. He was delighted that we successfully inspire and engage so many people of all ages about the amazing world of gannets. I was certainly inspired when I first heard Bryan speak. . . 37 years ago at Aberdeen University.

“Bryan had a huge influence on many people near and far, and he will be very sadly missed.” Dr Nelson was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1932. He spent most of his career on the staff at Aberdeen University and is best known for what he has revealed about the life of the Atlantic gannet.

The Nelsons spent three years in total on windswept, inhospitable Bass Rock, studying the behaviour and ecology of the northern gannets.

His study of gannets and the booby, a close relation to the gannet, took him all over the world, including a spell on the famous Galapagos Islands, the Peruvian Guano Islands, New Zealand and Christmas Island.

In 1967, he sailed to Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean to study the then unknown, jungle tree-top nesting Abbott’s booby, which breeds nowhere else in the world, and the brown booby. He also examined the colony of Australasian gannets at Cape Kidnappers, New Zealand.

Dr Nelson lived in Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, with his wife June.