The Bible recommends busy ants as role models for the lazy. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard. Consider her ways," Proverbs thunders. Yes, sluggards have a lot to learn from the ants but could, too, learn a lot from the Yellow-faced Honeyeaters.

This is the time of their autumn migrations as, in our region, they leave the mountains to our west (where they have spent the summer) and head to the coast, thence to go northwards in search of balmier places to spend the winter. Spectacularly large flocks of these little birds are, especially in the mornings, presently flitting through and across our territory. Twitching birdos go out and ogle this phenomenon along routes the species is known to choose. Your columnist spent Saturday morning on just such a safari.

The Murrumbidgee River Corridor is one of these routes and oglers know that flocks will veer eastwards from all sorts of spots along that corridor, for example just north of Angle Crossing. Wildlife photographer John Bundock (his fine pictures have often graced this column) is out and about watching the current migrations and sends us, so that we know what kind of a critter we are talking about, one of last week's migrating honeyeaters pausing to get its breath back.

Bird-conscious suburban Canberrans may, depending on where they live and on the species' whims of navigations, see some of the birds passing by, flying from treetop to treetop. In the newer suburbs, where trees are new and little, you may look in vain. Then, however leafy your neighbourhood and because the honeyeaters are not making their migrations just to oblige us and our binoculars and cameras, you may see hordes of them one day then none the next. The Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) chat line is at the moment tinkling with these sorts of observations.

A Jerrabomberra ogler reported last Wednesday, "Yesterday ... there were large numbers of honeyeaters passing through Jerrabomberra. One huge flock came over just before 1pm. It was spread over about a 500 metre front and was almost impossible to count. At a rough guess, I estimate around 2000 birds ... there was a steady stream passing through. Today [Wednesday] was a different story. I did not see a single honeyeater, despite being outside all morning, until 1.40, when a flock of about 50 passed through followed by a few smaller flocks."

The honeyeaters are busy now but, meanwhile, giving us a glimpse of extreme busyness in humans, ArchivesACT has just dusted off a distinguished eyewitness's report of men at work in Canberra in 1918.

In 1940 with World War II unfolding, senior public servant and mover and shaker of early Canberra, Charles Studdy Daley, gave a radio talk to Canberrans. He was trying to inspire everyone to roll up their sleeves and work harder, for this nation at war, by reporting a wondrous feat of wartime building and construction he'd seen here in 1918.

He'd seen Molonglo Internment Camp go, thanks to a sense of wartime urgency, from being just a notion to being substantially built, in an amazingly short time. It was, he enthused in his radio talk (AchivesACT has dusted of his handwritten script from which he spoke to Canberrans) "a constructional feat probably without parallel in Australia for the speed and efficiency of its design, organisation, and accomplishment".

Early in 1918 the British Government asked us (Daley saw the "secret cablegram") if we would host and build a camp to house several thousand enemy aliens.

"And within nine and a half weeks," Daley marvelled in 1940, "about 250 acres of vacant land between Canberra and Queanbeyan [at today's Fyshwick] was converted into a township with provision for 560 families and a large number of single persons, the group houses and other building being properly equipped and furnished, and served with water, sewerage and electricity.

"Arriving from Melbourne one morning, I came upon this hive of industry [men at work on building the camp] and it was an inspiring spectacle. I had never before seen men working so hard and so cheerfully. They felt that they were doing their bit [for the war effort].

"The noise, however, was deafening for there was a veritable army of carpenters all hammering at once. It sounded like machinegun fire. In these operations they actually used 10 tons of nails and three million super feet of timber. The length of timber required for floor stumps alone was over 10 miles, and the flooring covered an area of 10 acres."

Daley went into great detail about the construction of a camp that when completed was entirely village-like, complete with shops, a school, an assembly hall, a fire station and even "a special railway loop, with station and goods sheds".

This amazing feat of speed-building just shows us, Daley evangelised in the stirring finale to his wartime talk, what Australians can do "if the people throw themselves into the work with like determination and devotion to duty".

Next time it seems to you that a Canberra project is taking an awfully long time (for example the still-unoccupied $700 million ASIO headquarters at Parkes Campbell seemed to go up at about the speed that a glacier tip-toes down a valley) think of 1918, when we knew how to get a wriggle on.