KAKA PARROTS LORIES. 327 



kahikata or kauri tree always perching on the highest points resting a few 

 moments, and taking wing again till they are fairly out of sight. In the 

 early watches of the night, too, especially during the breeding season, and 

 just before the break of dawn, its peculiar cry betrays its wakeful rest- 

 lessness." 



The same author writes of the Kea Parrot (Nestor notabilis) : "When 

 hunting for food in its wild mountain home, it may be seen perched for 

 a few moments on a jutting rock ; then, descending to the ground to hunt for 

 grubs and insects, or to gather the ripening seeds from certain Alpine plants, 

 it disappears for a time and then mounts to the summit of another rock, 

 just as I have seen the Common Raven doing in the higher parts of 

 the Bernese Alps. On the level ground their mode of locomotion is 

 similar to that of the Kaka, consisting of a hopping rather than a walking 

 movement. Like that bird also, they are semi-nocturnal, exhibiting much 

 activity after dusk and in the early dawn. The cry of the Kea, as generally 

 heard in the early morning, has been aptly compared to the mewing of a cat ; 

 but it likewise utters a whistle, a chuckle, and a suppressed scream, scarcely 

 distinguishable from the notes of it noisy congener. But the most interest- 

 ing feature in the history of this bird is the extraordinary mariner in which, 

 under the changed conditions of the country, it has developed a 

 carnivorous habit manifesting it, in the first instance, by a fondness 

 for fresh sheep-skins and other station offal, and then, as its education 

 progressed, attacking the living sheep for the purpose of tearing and 

 devouring the kidney-fat, and inflicting injuries that generally prove 

 fatal. This habit, confined at first to only a few of the more enterprising 

 birds, soon became general, and it is a common thing now for whole parties 

 of them to combine in this novel hunt after live mutton ! So destructive, 

 indeed, have they become on some of the sheep-runs, that the aid of 

 Parliament has been invoked to abate the nuisance by offering a subsidy to 

 Kea-hunters. Before the full development of the raptorial habit described 

 above, the penchant for raw flesh exhibited by this Parrot in its wild state 

 was very remarkable. Those that frequented the sheep stations soon 

 manifested a distaste for all other food and lived almost exclusively on flesh. 

 They took possession of sheep's heads that were thrown out from the 

 slaughter-shed, and picked them perfectly clean, leaving nothing but the bones. 

 An eye-witness thus described this operation: "Perching itself on the 

 sheep's head, or other offal, the bird proceeds to tear off the skin and flesh, 

 devouring it piecemeal, after the manner of a Hawk, or at other times holding 

 the object down with one foot, and with the other grasping the portion it 

 was eating, after the ordinary fashion of Parrots." 



In these Parrots the tongue is furnished with a kind of brush, and the 

 culmen is smooth and not grooved along the middle. The Lories are birds 

 of brilliant plumage, and since Count Salvadori's review 

 of the family in the "Catalogue of Birds," Professor St. TheLories,- 

 George Mivart has published a monograph of the Family Loriida. 

 Loriidce,, beautifully illustrated by Keulemans. Following 

 Salvadori's arrangement, Professor Mivart recognises fourteen genera of 

 Lories, which are strongly represented in the Moluccan sub- region, and 

 extend west to Celebes, and eastwards to the Australian and Pacific sub- 

 regions. Although many of the Lories are well known as cage-birds, and 

 the species are well represented in most museums, it is extraordinary that 

 so little information is forthcoming as to their habits, Of several genera, 



