CHAPTER VIIL 



GETTING INTO BAD HABITS. 



I must lie free as the wildest tbing- 



Free to laugh iu the beams of day, 

 Free on the blast to be borne away." 



— William P-ember Reeves. 



I am almost certain that too much emphasis has been 

 laid on the fact that the Kea, a member of the brush-tongued 

 parrot family, has changed its ordinary diet and taken to 

 eating meat and fat. When we consider the natural diet of 

 the bird, the change seems more or less natural, for there 

 seems to be very little difference between eating a large 

 plump grub and a piece of fat. 



The more interesting fact is that, in addition to this, it 

 has changed its character, and, from being a harmless parrot, 

 has become a bird of prey of no mean order. 



Other birds, in confinement at all events, have been 

 known to eat meat, though in nature they seem to content 

 themselves with fruit and seeds. For example, many parrots 

 and cockatoos seem thoroughly to enjoy cleaning up bones 

 with particles of flesh on them. Again, in New Zealand, the 

 little white-eye (Zvsferops cwmjrscvnsj, whose natural food is 

 blight, small insects and fruit, can be easily trapped, in 

 winter especially, by means of suet fat or meat bones, both 

 of which it devours readily. 



Therefore it seems to me that there is nothing very 

 wonderful in the fact that the Kea enjoys a little meat and 

 fat in addition to its ordinary food. 



Another interesting case is that reported by Captain 

 Hende, of British East Africa, and forwarded to "Nature" 

 by Professor E. Ray Lankester, on 10th August, 1900. It 

 runs as follows : — " The common rhinoceros bird fBiqihaga 



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