HABITS OF THE KEA 



parrots, and in that position we shall leave it without 

 further comment. The general aspect of the bird will 

 leave no doubt upon the mind of the visitor that he is 

 looking at a parrot ; but it will probably not occur to 

 him that this bird is a murderous fowl, which has as it 

 were deliberately trodden the Accipitrine path and 

 deserted the innocent and frugivorous ways of most of 

 the parrot tribe. Inasmuch as there are, or were, some 

 ornithologists who regarded the parrots in general as 

 modified hawks, this revived taste for flesh seems to 

 have a meaning ; but, on the whole, it is to be pointed 

 out that the parrot tribe, whatever their real affinities 

 are, are not to be placed anywhere near to the eagles, 

 vultures, and hawks, in spite of their hooked beak and 

 cere at the nostril. Probably they are to be looked 

 upon as nearer to the plantain-eaters of Africa and to 

 various allies of those. In days gone by the kea was a 

 vegetarian, or at most an insect-eating bird. But 

 with the colonization of New Zealand came in due course 

 mutton, and the kea adopted the habit of loafing round 

 sheep-killing establishments and nibbling at garbage. 

 From this comparatively harmless taste the kea found 

 it but a short step to murder, and nowadays a herd of 

 keas will surround and kill a live sheep, particularly 

 perhaps a weakly one. So successful did these raids 

 become that the government was invoked to protect 

 the farmer and the slaughterer. It seems to have taken 

 some time for the kea to develop fully this noxious and 

 carnivorous habit. For the facts of its depredations 

 were only published for the first time in a scientific 

 journal so lately as 1871 ; and the advent of specimens 

 at the Zoo have never failed to elicit from the daily 

 press further comments on what is indeed a genuinely 

 remarkable fact. It is frequently remarked in such 

 communications that the goal of the kea's bill is the 

 kidney fat. It is true that the lumbar region is the one 



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