RENOWNED naturalist and author Elaine Hurrell has died suddenly at the age of 83.

Miss Hurrell was instrumental in setting up the Hill End Residential and Field Studies Centre three miles west of Oxford.

She was involved in equipping the classrooms and dormitories at the 65-acre site and also developed classroom projects to complement the outdoor experience.

Her brother Dr Leonard Hurrell said: “I think Hill End was her most significant appointment in her teaching career.

“She thoroughly enjoyed it and was well suited to the appointment. Elaine was an excellent teacher.

“Elaine felt teaching should be strongly related to getting children to understand wildlife in a sympathetic way and that what went on in the classroom was related to what was going on outside.”

Born at Down Park in Yelverton, Devon, on March 16, 1928, Miss Hurrell was the daughter of naturalist HG Hurrell.

On completing school she trained for a teaching career at Offley Training College in Hertfordshire, after it was suggested to her by the wife of her English teacher.

While there she began a survey of the swifts in the college’s roof which led to her being invited to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History where there is a famous swift colony.

Her brother said she never forgot her encounter with Oxford’s swift colony.

Miss Hurrell, who passed away on August 29, taught at Bridgwater, Bristol and Ivybridge, in Devon, before moving to Oxfordshire to set up the Hill End centre in the 1960s.

But as her parents’ health deteriorated she moved back to Devon to care for them.

Dr Hurrell said: “She was always affectionate, reliably selfless and cheerful. She always thought of herself as a teacher.”

She wrote several publications on two of her favourite mammals, otters and dormice, including Watch For the Otter in 1963.

In 1975 the Mammal Society asked her to survey the distribution of dormice throughout the British Isles using the fact that the shells of hazel nuts opened by them could be distinguished from those opened by other mammals.

She travelled all over the country with Gill McIntosh, one of her assistant teachers, and published a defining paper on their findings in 1984.

Never far from her was William, a wood pidgeon which was orphaned as a featherless squab nearly 20 years ago.

Miss Hurrell was planning a special celebration for him on October 6 for his 20th birthday.

Dr Hurrell said: “We are going to continue looking after his as long is it is necessary.”

A thanksgiving service held in Plymouth on Monday, September 19, was attended by around 200 people.

She is survived by her brothers Dr Hurrell and Kenneth Hurrell, and her two nephews Robert Hurrell and Andrew Hurrell.