7 p.m. ABC news tonight gave good coverage of this story, including
Dr Rayner
climbing trees and her complimentary comments towards these birds. Somehow it also included an odd bit of film of Eastern Rosellas at a nest.
About the
_expression_ ‘superb parrot central’,
isn’t it straightforward? As formerly they were mostly to the north and west of here but the point of the story is their distribution in the north is receding, and increasing
in the south, so with that change, the centre point of their geographic range is tending more towards the ACT, thus the name.
Philip.
From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Thursday, 7 December, 2017 4:49 PM
To:
Subject: FW: [canberrabirds] Canberra becoming superb parrot central for not-so-superb reasons - ABC News Canberra becoming superb parrot central for not-so-superb reasons - ABC News
I am interested in the _expression_ ‘superb parrot central’ used in this report. Was it used by Dr Rayner or are they the words of the journalist?
Users of this chatline might remember some years ago the words ‘finch central’ were used ( I think by Julian Robinson) to indicate a location where there
happened to be quite a few finches around, and for a time the label attached itself to that location. There was some discussion about the term that had, apparently, been coined at that time. I think Julian had in mind a faint connection with ‘Finchley Central’,
a tube station in north London which he had once used (and also myself as it happened). Someone else (was it Martin Butterfield?) thought the association was, humorously, with ‘Ghosts Central’ in the Ghostbusters movie. Was there another source? These days
it would not be surprising to find a claimed ‘Flowers Central’ for a florist shop, or some similar, faintly humorous, hyperbolic commercial use.
Since ‘finch central’ I have heard use of, for example, ‘honeyeaters central’ and ‘ducks central’ to draw attention to places where such groups can be found,
perhaps for just a short time. Such expressions are used in a light-hearted conversational sense, generally among birdwatchers. I would be interested to know if ‘finch central’ is indeed their origin or if there is a separate source.
Here ‘superb parrot central’ is used in a different way, certainly not light-heartedly. The phrase is intended to indicate that the ACT has relatively large
numbers of this threatened species, indeed ‘is going to become the most important area for the population’. Is the _expression_ in the process of acquiring a new connotation?
From: Janet Russell [
Sent: Thursday, 7 December 2017 8:20 AM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Canberra becoming superb parrot central for not-so-superb reasons - ABC News Canberra becoming superb parrot central for not-so-superb reasons - ABC News
