THE DAMAGE DONE. 121 



seem to kill at uncertain intervals ; and, after a big slaughter 

 of the sheep, weeks and months may pass before they again 

 hegin their depredations. 



Yet again, they usually confine their attacks to certain 

 localities, and when the birds there are shot the killing may 

 eease for years, if not altogether. Some shepherds put the 

 annual loss in the Kea country at 30 or 40 per cent., but 

 from what I can ascertain this is an exaggeration, for, if 

 this percentage were killed annually, there would soon be no 

 sheep left in the Kea-infested area. 



Sometimes, at special places, the killing may be so severe 

 that it becomes a very serious menace to the sheep-farmers, 

 as can be seen from the following instances. 



A musterer writes : — " I put a mob of sheep off the flat 

 on to the hills at Makaroa Station, and, on going up the 

 spur two days afterwards to where the sheep had encamped, 

 I found six dead." 



Another gives the following: — "On the Minarets Station, 

 I remember a mob of almost 1300 hoggets being put on a 

 spur, and we only mustered 700 off it. The Keas no doubt 

 were responsible for a large number of them." 



Three more must suffice. 



"One year I had a bad muster; 400 woolly sheep came 

 in at the beginning of winter when the snow fell and the 

 sheep could not get away. I placed them, as I thought, in 

 a safe position, on the hillside quite close to where I lived. 

 In spring, when I went to have a look at them, the Keas 

 liad killed about 200 of them." 



A shepherd, on going to his flock, which he had left the 

 night before, says : — " I shot nineteen Keas, and on looking 

 round I found that they had killed 38 sheep during the 

 night. Most of them that I found were warm and in splendid 

 <!ondition. The flock consisted of 1600 sheep, and during the 

 winter the Keas killed 300 out of that number, and, as 

 there were a good many birds about, we shifted the sheep." 



A run-holder wrote to me, in 1907: — "No later than last 

 week we came on 60 valuable ewes killed by them. One of 

 my shepherds, Watherston, who has communicated with you 



