What could He have been thinking of when, for example, he made the Rainbow Lorikeets? The species is on our mind because these seldom-seen-in-Canberra lorikeets are presently exciting some suburban Canberrans. One very famous Canberran, an unimpeachable source, has just reported to us that the species is going crazy for the loquats in his Narrabundah garden.

He wonders what the current thinking is about the species' relationship with Canberra, given that they are famously a bird Canberrans usually only encounter (in glorious abundance) while holidaying on the South Coast. Once upon a time, he remembers, it was thought that any Rainbow Lorikeets seen in Canberra were probably escapees from aviaries.

We have asked a Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG) authority, Geoffrey Dabb, about the status of the debate. Dabb has also kindly supplied us with today's photograph, of our species-under-discussion seen at Narrabundah's Rocky Knoll.

"There has been a lot of discussion about this. A few years ago they were regarded as aviary escapees. But now there are so many that the 'natural expansion' theory is gaining ground.

"They were in Sydney at European settlement, but since then they have expanded down the south coast and are now common in Melbourne suburbs (unknown there in the 1950s). On the other hand the large population in Perth must have originated from captive birds.

"Here they have steadily increased in numbers in recent years and are recorded as breeding in Canberra woodlands. Our birds are probably resident but they move around following flowering of eucalypts. They are strongly attracted as well to backyard feeders."

This columnist has yet to see any in our otherwise bird-infested street (this summer we are even blessed with our own uncommonly loud Common Koel). But when and if they materialise in my garden I will have mixed feelings. My garden has aesthetic pretensions and Rainbow Lorikeets clash with almost everything. They are a kind of flying Floriade. Spending 15 minutes looking through Rainbow Lorikeet pictures for one to go with this story I developed the most cracking headache I've had since the morning I spent in an Hawaiian shirt boutique in Honolulu.

So why are so many parrots so brightly-coloured? It was ever thus in our bird-blessed region. When the young naturalist-explorer George Bennett arrived in these parts on a spring day in 1832 he enthused to his diary "Birds of gay plumage crossed our path, exciting the admiration and attention of the traveller."

Perhaps, if there was a phase, a to and fro of avifaunal natural expansion underway, some of the gay plumage that dazzled Bennett belonged to Rainbow Lorikeets.

In Tim Low's super, new, a "Gosh!"-a-page book Where Song Began - Australia's birds and how they changed the world the author flirts with some of the ideas there are about parrots and their extreme colourfulness.

Perhaps, he muses, it is that with parrots laying their eggs in holes in trees and with the hatchlings maturing in that safely, secretively gloomy place, there was no need for them to evolve drab camouflage. Perhaps this "freed up the parrot palette".

Or perhaps "Blocks of colour in certain places may help tight flocks coordinate rapid travel, and also promote social harmony through pleasure, much like colours on human clothes. Parrots are more social than many birds ... and parrot sociality ... is probably something else that promoted their [famously high] intelligence."

Mischievously, blasphemously, we began today's column by ticking God off for his lapse of taste on the day he made the Rainbow Lorikeet.

But every great artist is bound to have the occasional lapse of form and overall God has achieved a great deal for us to go "Hallelujah!" about.

We mention this because yesterday's column whinged about there being no performance in Canberra this Christmas of Handel's Messiah. At this time of year Canberra, and all of thinking Christendom, feels the need to hear and even join in some spirited Hallelujahing. It is what the soul wants for Christmas. Handel's Messiah, with its Hallelujah Chorus, is the richest known source of pure, unprocessed hallelujahness.

But all is not lost, Canberrans! There is no complete, full-scale Messiah this year but it emerges that the Carols At The Court event at the High Court* will conclude with a performance (all choirs, the massed trumpets of The Trumpet Club and you, the congregation) of the Hallelujah Chorus.

Earlier in the concert the congregation is to join in the carol While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night. Will I be the only 60-something urchin there singing quietly, under his breath, the mondegreen version we used to sing at school that began "While shepherds washed their socks by night"?

But the cathedral-like acoustic of the High Court is such that the Hallelujah Chorus should be a concluding five minutes of total splendour. Some of us expect, after it, pumped up with euphoria, to be able to float home, with no need for the cars that brought us.

*Carols at the Court, featuring choirs and trumpets and Louise Page (soprano) and Tobias Cole (counter tenor) is in the vaulted foyer of the High Court, from 1.30pm to 3.30pm on Sunday 21 December. And (Hallelujah!) it is free.