Zoo Notes 
This particular variety of 
the New Zealand parrot 
(Nestor notabilis) is not as 
beautifully plumed as some 
of the varieties, but has a 
distinguishing characteristic 
which has made it most 
notorious. In 1872 one of 
these parrots (then called 
the Mountain Kea) was 
added to the Zoo collection, 
but only survived a few 
days; but the London press 
considered the advent of 
the bird sufficiently umpor- 
tant to chronicle it, as 
follows, and the notice is 
sufficiently accurate to be 
applicable to the two fine 
specimens introduced this 
summer. “There is now 
at the Zoo a very remarkable bird, the 
Nestor notabilis or Mountain Kea of New 
Zealand. It is a parrot of strong frame 
and powerful bill and claws, which were 
used, lke those of all parrots, for obtain- 
ing a vegetable diet, until the colonists 
introduced sheep and pigs. As soon as this 
was done the Kea seems to have abandoned 
vegetable food and to have taken entirely to 
flesh eating. He attacks sick or dying or 
KAKA PARROT. 
PROBOSCIS MONKEY (profile). 
disabled sheep, and with his powerful cutting 
beak opens a passage through the back, and 
eats the intestines: Hyen healthy animals are 
sometimes assailed by the Nestor notabilis, 
and there are sheep runs in New Zealand 
where considerable losses have been incurred 
through these strangely degenerate birds. 
The specimen at the Zoo gave as much 
trouble to capture as an eagle: it tore the 
clothes of the shepherd who knocked 1t down 
while pouncing on a lamb, and lacerated his 
hands. This parrot scorns cooked meat, 
biscuits, fruit, or seed, and hkes raw mutton 
better than any cooked food. This is a very 
curious example of change of habit, for there 
1s every reason to believe that before pigs 
and sheep were introduced into New Zca- 
land the Kea was as frugivorous at his 
meals as most if not all other parrots. 
He will now eat pork and beef as well as 
mutton, and has become, in fact, utterly 
and hopelessly carnivorous.” Recent obser- 
vation has shown that it is the kidneys 
and the fat surrounding them that the 
Kaka attacks, and not the intestines, as 
stated above. 
Wa" 
Nor many years ago Japanese drawings of 
what appeared to be domestic fowls, with 
