![]() ![]() ![]() Cornelius Valerianus says that the phœnix took its flight from Arabia into Egypt in the consulship8 of Q. Licinius and Cneius Cornelius, it was the two hundred and fifteenth year of the said revolution. He also tells us that when he wrote to the above effect, in the consulship7 of P. The same Manilius states also, that the revolution of the great year 6 is completed with the life of this bird, and that then a new cycle comes round again with the same characteristics as the former one, in the seasons and the appearance of the stars and he says that this begins about mid-day of the day on which the sun enters the sign of Aries. He tells us that no person has ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the sun, that it lives five hundred and forty years, that when it becomes old it builds a nest of cassia and sprigs of incense, which it fills with perfumes, and then lays its body down upon them to die that from its bones and marrow there springs at first a sort of small worm, which in time changes into a little bird: that the first thing that it does is to perform the obsequies of its predecessor, and to carry the nest entire to the city of the Sun near Panchaia, and there deposit it upon the altar of that divinity. ![]() The first Roman who described this bird, and who has done so with the greatest exactness, was the senator Manilius, so famous for his learning which he owed, too, to the instructions of no teacher. We are told that this bird is of the size of an eagle, and has a brilliant golden plumage around the neck, while the rest of the body is of a purple colour except the tail, which is azure, with long feathers intermingled of a roseate hue the throat is adorned with a crest, and the head with a tuft of feathers. It is said that there is only one in existence in the whole world, and that that one has not been seen very often. In the front rank of these is the phœnix, that famous bird of Arabia though I am not quite sure that its existence is not all a fable. I had the good fortune to not just meet them both, but to take several classes from them and other brilliant biologists in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology." Ethiopia and India, more especially, produce1 birds of diversified plumage, and such as quite surpass all description. I had never heard of Princeton until I read that book, but the notion that one could spend a lifetime watching wild birds and trying to understand how they evolved made me apply in the hopes of meeting Rosemary and Peter Grant. Another big influence was The Beak of the Finch, which one of my mentors at the Nature Society gave to me. In high school, I discovered books by evolutionary biologists, and still remember how transfixed I was by Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype. Why, for instance, did the Asian koel, a species of cuckoo that dumps its eggs in crows nests so their chicks grow up alongside crow chicks, make such a racket during the rainy (also the exam) season? The sound of koel couples serenading like demented ambulance sirens always cheered me up in the middle of a big exam, but I knew they weren't very popular among the other students. That, and the Nature Society (Singapore) provided me with some key mentors and a community of people that found a way to enjoy the natural world even in a city-state like Singapore.īirds and books also introduced me to the beauty of scientific ideas because I usually wanted to know why birds looked or behaved the way they did. ![]() In high school, I found that I really enjoyed getting other people excited about birds, too, and volunteered as a guide at a nature reserve. She even let the whole class cluster near the balcony if I spotted a white-throated kingfisher. I spent a lot of my free time in school wandering around on my own with binoculars, and one of my more sympathetic teachers allowed me to sit by the window so I could watch birds. When I was 12, a yellow-vented bulbul nested outside my bedroom window, and introduced to me birdwatching. I was always classifying people as various species based on their personalities (and I still do this). It started with learning hundreds of dog breeds so I could identify pet dogs on the streets of Singapore, where I grew up, and naming various African antelope on the TV if there was a nature documentary showing. This urge eventually found an outlet in birding. I loved observing behaviour and trying to classify organisms. ![]()
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