Very nice.

THE LITTLE WATTLEBIRD
.......and a taste of honey

Part 1:

The Little Wattlebird (Anthochaera chrysoptera), also known as the Brush Wattlebird, is a honeyeater. It is also a passerine bird of the family Meliphagidae. A passerine is any bird of the order Passeriformes, an order which includes more than half of all bird species. A notable feature of passerines is the arrangement of their toes, three pointing forward and one back. This facilitates perching. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders, with over 5,000 identified species.

Honeyeaters, and an Australian bird known as chats, make up the family Meliphagidae. In total there are 182 species in 42 genera, roughly half of them native to Australia. Chats are a group of small Old World insectivorous birds formerly classified as members of the thrush family Turdidae. They are now[considered Old World flycatchers.

Part 2:

The Little Wattlebird is found in coastal and sub-coastal south-eastern Australia. The species was originally described by ornithologist John Latham in 1802. Its specific name is derived from the Ancient Greek meaning 'golden-winged.' The Little Wattlebird is a medium to large honeyeater, but is the smallest wattlebird. The appearance is similar to the Yellow Wattlebird and the Red Wattlebird. The Little Wattlebird lacks the wattles which characterise the wattlebirds. Wattles are fleshy wrinkled and often brightly coloured folds of skin hanging from the neck or throat of certain birds. Juvenile wattles are duller with less streaking and have a browner eye.
I am informed, although I hardly need to be told, that the calls of the Little Wattlebird include: a strident cookay-cok, a raucous fetch the gun, a mellow guttural yekkop, yekkop, and many squeaky, musical lilting notes. The alarm call is a kwockor shnairt!

This prose-poem could go on to talk about: the breeding and feeding habits of this bird, details of the anatomy of these birds, their eggs and nests, their origins and evolution, their fossil record, their global distribution, the arrangements of their families, and on and on in great detail thanks to the modern services of the internet in cyberspace.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, among other websites, 26/5/'14.

Part 3:

The above words are just
a setting for a description
of my experience of these
birds as they sit atop of a
tree in front of my study as
I write and read, edit and go
about my online publishing.

This bird wakes me up every
morning with raucous sounds,
and it keeps up its stridency,
though less frequently as the
day goes on...He, or she, has
been up in that tree for many
years of my retirement, and I
talk to it like an old friend. Its
vocabulary is just one word as
it goes about life in and out of
that tree taking time to drink the
honey of a nearby Banksia, as I
drink a sweetness of my own on
most days, a honey packaged on
these pages of cyberspace print.
I go about these years of being
finished with a 50 year student
and employment life, 1949-99,
and head into the evening of my
days tasting of a leisure that was
much like the ancient Greeks in
conception, purpose, & meaning.1

1 Leisure was accorded a central place in ancient Athenian society, the Golden Age of Athens after the defeat of the Persians and before the horror of the Peloponnesian War, say, 471-431 BC or, more generally, 500 to 300 BC. Leisure was valued for the freedom assumed to lie at its core, and for the opportunities it provided both to achieve excellence of character and to display the same. The happiness, or felicity, rising from a life devoted to developing and displaying excellence in the pursuit of the highest goods, wisdom and intelligence was what they called 'eudaimonia'.

This is demonstrated in the following short quotes from Aristotle. "Now it is a thing admitted that citizens in a state that is to be well governed must be provided with leisure from menial occupations; but how this leisure is to be provided it is not easy to ascertain."
( Politics 1269a)

". . . nature itself seeks to be able not only to engage rightly in business, but also to occupy leisure nobly; this is the first principle of all things. Although both business and leisure are necessary, yet leisure is more desirable and more fully an end than business. The proper occupation of leisure lies in its opportunities for solitude, moderation and reflection."
(Politics 1337b)

For a discussion of Sebastian de Grazia’s Of Time, Work, and Leisure (1964), and an extended analysis of Aristotle’s conception of leisure, which lies at the core of de Grazia’s argument, go to: "Leisure and Civility: Reflections on a Greek Ideal" by John L. Hemingway in the journal of The Leisure Sciences, Volume 10, pages 179-191.

Ron Price
27/5/'14.

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Here is a link that might be useful: Pioneering Over Five Epochs

Very nice.