Education, as my professional title suggests, plays a big part in my role within the District Council's Countryside Service. Schools and colleges are encouraged to use the Local Nature Reserves and countryside near their premises to help teach various subjects on the National Curriculum, from biology to citizenship.
But education should not, and does not end at the classroom door and so my task is to encourage people to learn more about their environment and countryside all the time.
For local retirees that might involve joining me in the Seaton Marshes bird hide on a Friday morning and enjoying a cup of coffee while I prattle on about the fineries of wetland management for winter wildfowl. The coffee is essential. I have had several people suffer spontaneous narcolepsy when I tell them about peak flow rates and good ditch husbandry!
But, in many ways the more senior citizens of the district are already won over, there's not much value to add to their knowledge base.
Young people, however, as the truism goes, are the future, and a seed of knowledge sown here can grow over time to something considerable and significant. So, to make sure these people are not overlooked, I co-ordinate a club called the Junior Rangers.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the 2045 UN Secretary General will come from these loose ranks, but every little bit extra helps.
I've recently sent out the winter newsletter for the Junior Rangers, snappily titled the Marshes Mirror, and thought that as a reader of this column, you might be interested to see what sort of articles I write for young people, so here's a few of them reproduced here:
Stoatally Weird!
Even though stoats are widespread in the Devon countryside, you will be lucky to see one as they are very secretive, rarely coming out into the open.
Some stoats go all-white in the winter, and are called ermine. This normally happens in colder places than Devon though!
The luxurious white fur was highly prized by trappers and important people's gowns were trimmed with ermine fur. This practice has thankfully now stopped.
If you see a stoat or a weasel you can tell the difference between them by looking at the tail. If there is a black tip to the tail it is a stoat, and if the tail is tipped white, it's a weasel. Stoats are amazing predators, tackling prey much larger than themselves. Eating a wide variety of prey means that they should be very common animals indeed. Look out for stoats when you are next exploring
Let sleeping mice lie
Dormice. Fluffy little ginger cuties that sleep for most of the year. What a perfect life! Many of our woodlands here in East Devon have dormice living in them, even though they are a scarce animal nationally.
You may have noticed that dormice did not appear on the article about mice. Well that is because they are not true mice, known as rodents, but belong to a separate group of small mammals.
Dormice lack a caecum, an organ that helps animals digest cellulose, so dormice have to eat a specialist diet high in protein and containing lots of hazelnuts and aphids. That sort of food is scarce in the winter months, which is why the dormouse has developed the long hibernation period to survive the winter.
Dormice use their body fat as a life support system while they hibernate. If we have a warm period in the winter dormice will sometimes come out of hibernation early and have to go back to sleep when they realise their mistake. If global warming brings us warmer wetter winters, the Dormouse could be one East Devon resident that would not benefit.
Don't miss the mistle
Mistle thrushes are our biggest thrush. Much bigger than a song thrush with big broad wings, when flying they can sometimes look a lot like a woodpecker.
Also known as a storm ***, due to its habit of singing in a tree when it rains, this bird was immortalised in the poem The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy.
The body is more speckled, and the head has a greyish speckled pattern too. Its body shape is unmistakably a thrush, standing upright and tall as it hops about on the ground.
Mistle thrushes eat lots of berries in the winter and are VERY protective over their chosen berry trees. A male and female pair of mistle thrushes will defend a mountain ash with fruit, stopping all other birds feeding on it. They will feed on other sources of food and keep the rowan berries for themselves in case the winter gets really cold!
Although they are large and fairly common in East Devon, they can be easily overlooked, so to spot one you need to keep your ears open. They have a distinctive call, which sounds like a football rattle, a buzzing, scratchy noise that is very loud. Listen out for that in the winter countryside and see if you can spot yourself a spotty mistle thrush
So there you go, a selection of some of the East Devon wildlife facts that the Junior Rangers will be reading about this winter.
If you have a child who would be interested in becoming a Junior Ranger, contact the Countryside Service on (01395) 517557.