Denis Saunders has just been looking through some old photographs for anything of use to the archivist of his old high school. He came across this snap ''of a helpful street sign pointing out what Red Hill Lookout had to offer''. He wonders if any older readers remember seeing it there before spoilsport authorities removed it.

He confesses that he took the photograph in 1964 or 1965 after he and his late friend Michael Quinn (needless to say, they were university students) borrowed the street sign from nearby Charlotte Street, wittily amended it and wittily relocated it ''as a public service, to point out the many facets of Canberra life''.

He thinks it must be OK to own up now, because ''after close to 50 years we must be well outside the statute of limitations''.

Tuesday's portrait of a Griffith garden's female gang-gang cockatoo with a jet-black (instead of the usual grey) head has created a lot of interest. Here is a different portrait of the same striking-looking fowl.

So far, though, we've only had one report (from a reader living in what he calls ''Lower Forrest'') of another, seen last Sunday. It is a little too early to say that this points, scientifically, to a special incidence of black-faced female gang-gangs in salubrious suburbs, but as reported last week the median price of homes in Griffith and in Forrest is well over $1 million. Until we hear of sightings of birds like this in working-class suburbs this theory will never quite go away.

More scientifically, Chris Davey of the Canberra Ornithologists Group (COG), having seen the pictures of the Griffith critter, says he's sure that the blackness ''looks more like a feather aberration than a stain''.

Earlier, in conversation with him about the bird's newsworthy negritude, he'd mentioned that sometimes some unusual-looking pigmentations in birds are ephemeral stainings of the feathers by something in their habitats. So, for example, some waterbirds can be stained by oxides in the waters they haunt. Birds that frequent hollows in trees (gang-gangs do) can pick up some of the pigmentations of their woody apartments and so there was an outside possibility that this sooty-faced gang-gang might have been literally sooty-faced from being in the hollow of a burnt tree. Indeed, when Sally Harris first saw the bird in question she had a passing anxiety that its head might have been burnt.

Davey makes the point, reported yesterday, that ''feathers are such a dynamic organ that all sorts of things can happen to them'', including aberrations of colour caused by genetics or of nutrition. Just how many black-faced female gang-gangs we have among us is, he anticipates with pleasure, just the sort of thing we may discover during next year's COG-initiated ACT Year of the gang-Gang when scientists and citizens accumulate data about this enigmatic species.

One of the unanticipated joys of being at Tuesday's same-sex marriage debate at the Assembly (we were crammed into the reception room where 150 of us watched proceedings on a big screen) was hearing so much praise given to our city in the speeches of MLAs.

For an openly pro-Canberra Canberran (this columnist not only wears his heart on his sleeve in this but wears on his lapel an ACT badge/brooch that is the query-attracting shape of the ACT)* it did the heart good. It has been a year of learning to count our city's blessings and in Tuesday's proceedings the blessings of our being a place enlightened and tolerant enough to generate legislation like this was harped on again and again.

Shane Rattenbury reported that Lauren wrote ''typically thought of as a conservative boring old place, Canberra is the face of progress …''

Heather wrote that she was ''thrilled'' to be in Canberra as all this was happening and that ''I can only hope we'll no longer be known as the home of the fat cats and will now be called the Rainbow Territory''.

That was met with whoops of rapture in the reception room.

In her letter to Rattenbury, Marie said she was ''extremely proud of my lovely city, so often the butt of jokes, to be the first to legislate on marriage equality''.

''And Molly,'' Rattenbury told us, concluding, ''simply says 'Proud! Proud! Proud!' ''

*On sale to patriots at Craft ACT, North Building, London Circuit, city.