BIRDS AT PLAY 69 



beautiful scarlet lories are also very fond of 

 wrestling matches, and when a pair are kept 

 in a cage you will constantly see them hanging 

 from the roof or a perch by one foot, and 

 skirmishing together with their bills and the 

 other foot. 



The most playful birds I have ever seen 

 are those horrible New Zealand parrots, the 

 keas, which have taken to gnawing meals of 

 raw mutton from live sheep ; not that they 

 want to kill the sheep, but of course the poor 

 beasts generally die from the shocking wounds 

 they get, and there is a reward paid for the 

 heads of the destructive birds. 



Some of them are kept at the Zoo in a 

 fine large aviary on a sloping bank, and they 

 are always having some game or other. At 

 one time they got a lot of fun by rolling a 

 barrel-shaped wire rat-trap, which had been put 

 in their aviary, as far as they could up the 

 bank, and then jumping out of the way as it 

 rolled down again. A football, if they did not 

 succeed in tearing it to bits, would give them 

 any amount of fun. 



One very miserable afternoon in December 

 I remember noticing that they were quite the 



