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THE HUGE holes left in Oxford life - academic, political, educational, musical and personal - following the sudden and premature death at only 58 of Dr Robin McCleery are impossible to fathom.

As a fellow of Wadham College and departmental research fellow of the Edward Gray Institute of Field Ornithology, he was known to his students as the man whose door was always open and latterly, as dean of Wadham, as a firm but kindly presence in student affairs.

As a zoologist and ornithologist he is mourned worldwide by academics in his field, with memorial services to be held in Sri Lanka and the Pacific Islands as well as closer to home, while he is recalled in Oxford less formally as the man who, when he found a disoriented swan wandering in the High, got off his bike, picked it up and carried it bodily back to the River Thames.

He conducted much of his research on great tits in the university's Wytham Wood, where his ashes will be scattered in the spring, and on swans at the Abbotsbury sanctuary in Dorset.

But in his own neighbourhood this eminent scientist was the man who took in - and sometimes dispatched - damaged wildlife, with, at various times, a couple of baby swifts being reared in the airing cupboard and a young abandoned squirrel scampering around the kitchen. And that was quite apart from the small menagerie of more permanent pets, including a rather fearsome parrot.

Dr McCleery was a man of principles and enthusiasms. Old Labour to the core, he stuck with the party when many of his friends did not, serving as a school governor for 25 years at The Cherwell School, which his daughters attended, including a spell as chairman, offering wise advise to successive heads.

He became a local campaigner for excellence in state education through the Oxfordshire Governors Association, of which he was a founder member. The OGA has become a routinely consulted organisation in the county and nationally.

With his wife, Jill, he helped run a South Oxford adventure playground for 20 years, a project to give some excitement and structure during the summer holidays to children with little or nothing to do. He had a zest and enthusiasm for new adventures which will now never be dulled by old age.

Music was his other great passion. He played saxophone for 35 years in a ceilidh band called Jacks Maggot to huge enthusiasm, leaving the band bereft but brave as they played him out of Wadham chapel after his funeral.

Playing at the college's Wadstock festival last year with his daughter Anna's band, he stunned the assembled students, who had no idea of their dean's versatility.

But there was classical music, too, and his passing will leave a profound hole in the bass section of the Oxford Harmonic Society choir.

Dr McCleery's death leaves his colleagues, friends and family stunned. His memorial is to be part of his college's outreach programme, specifically to encourage and assist less-privileged children in Oxford's comprehensive schools to apply to the university. Nothing could be more in keeping with the spirit of the man.

By Maureen O'Connor

8:26am Thursday 7th February 2008

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