ON THE HABITS OF THE KBEA. 297 
sheep of the mob, and left others in a more or less sorrowful 
plight. Many a pipe was smoked out whilst shrewd heads were 
meditating and speculating on what could have occasioned such 
an inexplicable and mysterious visitation. At last a musterer 
gave it as his opinion that the injury was inflicted on the sheep 
by a kind of parrot, rather a tame sort of bird that was to be met 
with on the tops of the ranges, and that the said bird was un- 
commonly like a Kaka. This suggestion was received with 
ridicule, and his sharp-witted audience overwhelmed the observant 
musterer with jokes and quaint expressions of unbelief. But the 
shepherds saw Keas visiting the meat-gallows, tweaking off 
mutton fat with their strong beaks; soon after one or more 
hands actually saw a parrot on a sheep, plucking and tearing wool 
and flesh on a precisely similar spot on the back, where so many 
had been found to be fatally wounded. 
Now that the men were on a track, there was plenty of 
evidence soon forthcoming as to the mischievous and destructive 
propensities of these bold assailants; the examination of the 
animals mauled so injuriously, showed that in the majority of 
cases very little of the flesh had been devoured; it had been torn 
away apparently, not so much for food, but rather as an obstacle 
that prevented the bird’s being able to reach the kidney fat. The 
flocks that suffered most from these marauders were almost in- 
variably those which were depastured on the higher mountain 
ranges where the nature of the country was exceedingly rugged. 
In these regions their peculiar domain, about the snow-line, for 
they seldom quit the tops, the birds, although gregarious, do not 
move about in large flocks: if as many as fifty are seen together, 
it is of rare occurrence; they usually are scattered in small 
flights, as from a pair up to perhaps the number of a dozen 
individuals. It is no exaggeration to place the extent of their 
range as covering some millions of acres; it stretches northwards 
from the towering highlands that enclose the picturesque shores 
of Te Anau and Wakatipu, through the whole length of the 
Mackenzie Country, as far as the jagged peaks against whose 
sides rest the numerous glaciers from which spring the Rangitata, 
the Ashburton, and the Rakaia; its dominion appears to be yet 
extending, for, whilst this paper has been preparing for the press, 
I have heard of Keas having been obtained at Grassmere by 
the West Coast Road. Pressing northwards, it is found at 
2Q 
