A pensioner thrown off his allotment for only growing fruit trees has been fined for painting the allotment association chairwoman's gate with spots "like a dairy cow".

William Todd, 67, was evicted from his plot by the River Forth in Stirling after the Stirling Allotment Association committee complained he was not properly maintaining it.

An acrimonious row ended with Mr Todd consulting a solicitor and members of the the Association committee entering his plot when he was absent and cutting down and burning the trees which the retired roofer had tended there for ten years.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard that a short time later, on August 25, 2014, Allotment Association chairwoman Carol Kirk turned up to do some weeding, only to find that her gate, which used to be plain wood, had been painted white with gloss paint and daubed with brown spots.

She repainted it blue and set up a time-lapse camera.

A week later the court heard she "received a text to say it had been blobbed again".

The camera was checked and she positively identified a figure, crouching by the gate and daubing it in the darkness, as that of Todd.

Police were called and found a used paintbrush on a coffee table in his home, which matched the vandalism on the gate.

Todd, of Cornhill Crescent, Stirling, denied vandalism and claimed that "two hard landings" earlier in his life when he was a sky diver would have prevented him from crouching.

He added that police had not done "forensics" on the brush, but was found guilty of twice vandalising the gate and fined £300.

Sheriff William Gilchrist told him: "There's no evidence that the paint damaged the gate, arguably it might preserve it, but applying paint to somebody else's property is vandalism.

"They clearly wouldn't want their gate to be in that position."

Todd was found not guilty of further charges which alleged that after his eviction he had stalked members of the committee by repeatedly staring at them through binoculars from the other side of the River Forth.

He claimed he had actually been watching "otters, red kites, ospreys, and people skulling on the river", but he was arrested and held for 12 hours in Falkirk Police Station several miles away before finally being allowed home.

Sheriff Gilchrist rejected his claim that he had been watching wildlife and found he had actually been keeping an eye on his old allotment, which had been re-allocated to a member of the committee, but the sheriff ruled that did not amount to stalking.

Speaking of his allotment, Todd told the court: "Oh Crivvens, I loved it. When I first got it, it was £3 a year. I had never owned land and being down there was fantastic.

"But Mrs Kirk didn't like a lot of fruit trees. I had ten fruit trees, including a pear tree. We used to give the fruit to good causes, but the committee cut them down and burned them.

"I was stunned."

During her evidence, Mrs Kirk said that she had called in the police because there had been earlier vandalism at the allotments.

She said: "My polytunnel was slashed, frames were buckled and red diesel was sprayed over the crops.

"When I looked on the camera, I saw Mr Todd blobbing my gate. I think it looked a bit like a Friesian cow."