Back to this gorgeous creature, this bawcock, in a moment.

Meanwhile well-travelled readers continue to report their sightings of our nation's great botanical ambassador, the Wollemi Pine, representing us overseas and doing it less controversially than our young male tennis players do.

John Sanders tells us "There is a very healthy Wollemi pine growing in the entrance foyer of the Restaurant at the Rusutsu Resort on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It appears to be doing very well. So much for the [alleged] difficulty of growing it."

As much-reported here in recent days these are Wollemi-conscious times for we are celebrating the 21st anniversary of the Jurassic tree's discovery. Your columnist is tragically Wollemiless but lots of Canberra botanical patriots have one in their gardens or on their patios. And so at the weekend my little green heart leapt with joy to find lots of tiny Wollemis on sale at a Canberra plant nursery.

"I'll have one of these!" I rejoiced, gambolling up to them.

But then my working-class hopes of owning one were dashed by the discovery that, at $145 each, they were priced beyond the means of the average wage slave. Several of the nursery's bigger potted pines seemed priced beyond the reach of all but the expenses-pillaging Bronwyn Bishop parliamentary classes.

But the best things in life, the moon, the stars, sunbeams, falling in love, not voting for Tony Abbott and glimpsing Flame Robins are free.

John Bundock explains that "the Flame Robins are altitudinal migrants".

"We see them high in the mountains in summer and down in the lower parts of Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve (and other places) in the winter."

And on a very recent weekday, and mostly robin-seeking visit to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, a posse of members of the Canberra Ornithologists Group was delighted to see, by a conservative count, about 60 Flame Robins, some of them of course the more Amish-plumaged females. How bird-blessed our Territory is!

You will notice that above we called the male Flame Robin a "bawcock" and this unfamiliar word comes from a list of Obsolete Words We Should Bring Back, just furnished for us by a kindly reader. Leaping to give employment to some of the best of them we are calling the male Flame Robin a bawcock (and Nick Kyrgios with all his golden bling is another) because it is an ancient word (of French origin and using the word coq as in cockerel) once used to describe flamboyantly beautiful males.

*Did any readers recognise this turn of phrase? Fans of the great, uncompromising satirist/songwriter/musician/mathematician Tom Lehrer will know that it is part of his spoken introduction (before a live, doting audience of folk looking for some relief from what he diagnosed as their drab, wretched lives) of his irresponsible masterpiece Poisoning Pigeons In The Park. Spring-welcoming and joyful It begins:

All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev'ry Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.

Lehrer's heydays were in the 1960s and he would be thought very politically incorrect today. He famously gave up satire and retreated to the anonymity of academic life (to teach mathematics), reflecting that United States politics and society (targets of his satire) was now so awful as to be beyond satire. Yes, almost 90 now, in this he must be feeling vindicated by US phenomena like the rise and rise of Donald Trump.

And while on satire and the politically incorrect the Street Theatre is soon to ring with a word (it will only be sung once and will be over before you know it, leaving you wondering if you really heard it) we dare not even hint at in this family column.

Double Trouble, featuring the famed Song Company in a presentation by Tobias Coles' ever-adventurous Canberra Choral Society, is a concert dedicated to the work of composer Martin Wesley-Smith and his twin brother, librettist Peter Wesley-Smith. Between them they are the Double Trouble of the show's name.

Whereas Lehrer's satire was especially biting (sinking its teeth into its subjects as enthusiastically as Dracula sinking his into a virgin's deliciously pale neck) the twins' is mostly a bit more gentle. It does not so much bite Australia as gnaw and nibble it a little.

But an exception is some of the song cycle Black Ribbon. Commissioned by the Canberra Choral Society to mark the centenary of Federation in 2001, some of Black Ribbon portrays and questions racist attitudes. A CCS spokeschorister advises that "some of Black Ribbon can be so uncomfortable to sing that several members of the choir refused to participate in the premiere in 2001".

"The current debate about Indigenous recognition in the referendum makes works like Black Ribbon even more important in 2015. CCS has therefore decided it is time to share Black Ribbon with a new generation of Canberra audiences."

And this time, she advises, every member of the choir has plucked up the nerve to join in and sing every hair-raising word of Black Ribbon.

Double Trouble is at the Street Theatre at 7.30pm Saturday 1 August and 3pm this Sunday 2 August Tickets: www.thestreet.org.au