Oct. 6, 1881] 



NATURE 



53 



m 



The individual of this species now in the Regent's 

 Park collection, from which the drawing has been taken, 

 was transmitted as a present to the 

 Society by Dr. A. de Lautour of Otago, 

 New Zealand, along with the subjoined 

 particulars concerning it, contained in a 

 letter addressed to the secretary : — ^. , 



" I have the pleasure of informing you 

 that I am sending home an example of 

 the Kea {Neslor notabilis), or Mountain 

 Parrot, a bird celebrated, or rather no- 

 torious for its sheep-destroying proclivi- 

 ties. 



" Many abler pens than mine have 

 already written about their habits ; but I 

 was fortunate eneugh to be perhaps the 

 first to send home a specimen of their 

 work in the shape of the colon and lum- 

 bar vertebra; of a sheep, in which colo- 

 tomy had been performed by one of these 

 birds. 



" This specimen was shown at a meet- 

 ing of the Pathological Society by my 

 friend and former master, Mr. John 

 Wood, F.R.S., and is now in the Mu- 

 seum of the Royal College of Surgeons 

 of England. 



'• The bird which I am now sending 

 home has been in my possession for 

 nearly two years. It was caught in the 

 act of attacking some sheep which a 

 shepherd was bringing down off the tops 

 of some ranges in the back country. 

 He luckily succeeded in knocking it over 

 with a stone, cut its wings, and brought 

 his captive down In effecting the capture ^ 



the shepherd suffered considerable loss 

 as to his trousers and other garments, 

 and not a little injury in scratches from 

 its formidable beak and claws. These 

 same scratches had not entirely healed when he came 

 down here under my care some 

 ten days later, suffering fro.n a 

 broken leg (this by the way was 

 not done by the Kea). 



"While I have had the Kea, 

 his diet has consisted mainly 

 of mutton, raw ; he does not 

 care for cooked meat, but will 

 take it if very hungry. Occa- 

 sionally he will take beef, and 

 he is fond of pork. Popularly 

 he is said to prefer fat, but in 

 confinement he choases the lean 

 and leaves the fat ; he does not 

 care for biscuit, but he likes 

 the seed of the sow-thistle." 



Again, in his excellent work 

 on the birds of New Zealand, 

 Dr. Buller tells us that the 

 "penchani for raw flesh e.x- 

 hibited by this parrot in its 

 wild state is very remarkable. 

 Those that frequent the sheep- 

 stations appear to li\-e almost '^' 

 exclusively on flesh. They _ ,, 

 claim the sheeps' heads that -^^~ir ^ 

 are thrown out from the slaugh- ^','j Q~r~yc_' 

 ter-shed, and pick them per- ■— /«U.v— .c 

 fectly clean, leaving nothing but 

 the bones." An eye-witness has described this operation to 



published (in the Zoohsist of the present month), it would seem, however, 

 that the losses sustained by the_ attacks of the Kea are in some cases very 



Dr. Hector as follows : — " Perching itself on the sheep's 

 head or other offal, the bird proceeds to tear off the skin 





Fig. 9. — The Mountain Nestor. 



and flesh, devourinsf it piecmeal after the manner of a hawk, 



Flu. lo.-lht Gay.il. 



or at other times holding the object down with one foot, 



I and with the other grasping the portion it was eating, after 



the fashion of ordinary parrots. The plan usually adopted 



on the stations for alluring this bird is to expose a fresh 



