Benham.— 0?^ the Flesh-eating Propensity of the Kea. 77 



the victims of this craving for flesh. It is — as some of my cor- 

 respondents put it — only the more daring and older birds that 

 attack the sheep. Just as, in India, there are only certain 

 tigers that, unprovoked, indulge in human flesh — the '' man- 

 eaters " — so, amongst the keas, we must recognise certain 

 " sheep-eaters," though whether their number is on the increase 

 seems unascertained. 



The Kea is still at Work. 



It will be seen from the letters that the kea is still at work 

 in, at any rat^e. certain districts, whereas in some of those sta- 

 tions at which they were formerly a pest the birds at present 

 appear to be less addicted to the habit. This may be owing 

 to the fact that on certain stations it is no longer profitable 

 to keep sheep (see King's letter), or because possibly the " sheep- 

 eaters " have migrated to other regions. At any rate, at Hawea, 

 D. Bell " shot three keas attacking living sheep on the 12th 

 January, 1906 — shot one on the sheep's back. I shot eight 

 keas during the term we were mustering in January, and their 

 crops were full of mutton." And he says that " they kill sheep 

 now as much as ever." Other evidence from Makarora is to 

 the same effect : " The sheep still come in more or less wounded, 

 and even with the entrails hanging out, and when killed for 

 food, as many as one in four present healed wounds in the back " 

 (Ford). But one thing seems certain, that the birds now go 

 more thoroughly to work, and make a more complete " job " 

 of it than in old days. Then the sheep were usually merely 

 wounded. True, the wounds may have been serious, and some 

 of the sheep died of their wounds. But nowadays the carcase 

 is devoured, the bones are left picked clean. Mr. D. Bell sent 

 me the arm-bones (humerus) of sheep from which the keas 

 had actually extracted the marrow. In each of the four bones 

 sent, a more or less triangular hole had been neatly made by 

 the kea, just below the " head." (Plate IV.) 



Mr. King ■\\Tites, " One thing has been noticed lately by 

 those who were among the sheep in high country — viz., that 

 the keas when they kill a sheep now pick the carcase clean, 

 leaving nothing but the skeleton, the skin almost turned inside 

 out." 



Mr. Bell also refers to this increase in the damage done 

 to individual sheep. It has been suggested by Taylor White (8) 

 that originally the bird merely sucked the blood, but that 

 it soon discovered that the flesh itself is good to eat, and, as 

 we learn, now recognises the " importance of being thoroughly 

 in earnest " by devouring the entire carcase. 



