80 Transactions. 



duving the day ; and many people who have spent a night in 

 the Ball Hut on the side of the Tasman Glacier will recall their 

 noisy habits in the early morning, before the dawn. 



The Normal Food. 



The kea, like other parrots, is normally a vegetarian, though 

 it includes insects in its diet. At any rate, so it appears from 

 the few reliable statements that exist. 



According to that accurate observer, the late Mr. Thomas 

 H. Potts (1), the kea gathers " its subsistence from the nectar of 

 hardy flowers, from the drupes and berries of dwarfed shrubs 

 that contend with a rigorous climate and press upwards almost 

 to the snow-line of our alpine giants. To these food-resources 

 may be added insects found in the crevices of rocks, beneath the 

 bark of trees," &c. 



Mr. Potts also states (2) (" Out in the Open," quoted by 

 Buller in " Birds of New Zealand," i, p. 168, footnote) that when 

 the snow covers these subalpine shrubs, and insect-life is dor- 

 mant, the kea is forced to go lower and lower down the moun- 

 tains to take shelter in gullies, where it feeds on the hard, bitter 

 seeds of the kowhai [Sophora tetraptera], small hard seeds in the 

 fruit of Pittosporum, the black berries of Aristotelia fruticosa 

 (the " native currant "), as well as on the fruit of the pitch-pine 

 and the totara. 



The most detailed bill of fare is that given by Huddlestone(6) : 

 it includes the grub of such insects as the weta {Deinacrida) 

 and cicada, which are to be found in the ground. " Besides 

 grubs, they fed on the berries of various alpine shrubs and trees, 

 such as the snowberry, Gaultheria, Coprosma, Panax [= Notho- 

 panax], the little black seed in a white skin of Phyllocladus 

 alpinus, the Pittosporum with its hard seed in a glutinous mass 

 like birdlime, and the red berry of the Podocarpus [nivalis], also 

 on roots of various herbaceous plants — Aciphylla squarrosa and 

 A. Colensoi, Ranunculus lyallii, celmisias, &c." 



My own observation, while in the Southern Alps this year, 

 adds to the list the orange berries of the low-growing heath 

 Leucopogon fraseri. Two birds were feeding on these berries 

 within two yards of where I was sitting : they eat the juicy part 

 of the berry, putting out the skin and usually the " seed " also, 

 which I found afterwards on the ground, though now and then I 

 heard the bird crack the seed, so that occasionally, at any rate, 

 it swallows this. 



Both Potts and Huddlestone refer to it eating the " hard 

 seeds " of Pittosponim, and Podocarpus ; but I wonder whether 

 this is habitual ; why should they neglect the juicy covering ? 

 Mr. Cameron wi-ites, " The food of the kea is berries, roots of 



