282



Mr. Edgar F. Stead,



At Lake Coleridge we were hospitably received, and, stay¬

ing there over Wednesday, we left on Thursday afternoon for

•Glenthorn, eighteen miles further on. Reaching the Harper

river we found the crossing extremely rough, all the ford having

been washed away, so we decided to leave the buggy on this side

and pack our swag the remaining three miles. On Friday we

were very busy making traps and cages to carry our call birds.

About midday the musterers came in, our host among them, and

we learned that they were going up the Wilberforce on Sunday

to camp at a gully about two miles past the Jagged Spur, so we

made arrangements to have our swag dropped en route. On

■Saturday afternoon H. and I started off up a spur behind the

homestead with a call bird and three traps, which we set in a

shingle slip. Our traps were cages of wire netting shaped like a

pudding-bowl, and we simply propped them up with a “ figure

four,” which we baited with a piece of meat. The call bird we

placed near the traps, so as to attract the wild keas from a

distance.


THE CAEE BIRD.


Before breakfast on Sunday we climbed to our traps, but

-no keas had been there, so we gathered things together and went

back to the house. The call bird, which had never been in a

small cage before, and was very wild when we first put her in the

evening before, had got quite used to her surroundings, and had

learned how to hang on with her feet and beak, so that she was

not knocked about when being carried. It is marvellous how

quickly a kea will adapt itself to circumstances. This particular

bird, after I had carried her on my back for five or six hours, got

so accustomed to the motion that she would call softly to herself,

or eat snowberries out of my hand as we went along. If the

climbing was rough, and the cage temporarily upside down, she

would brace herself with feet and beak, and quietly wait until she

was righted. So quiet indeed did she become, and so docile, that

we called her Angela.


On Sunday afternoon, having got all our goods and chattels

together—camera, gun, cages, tramps, tent, provisions, etc,,

—we started off up the Wilberforce on our eight miles

walk to the Jagged Spur Gully. We had put a partition in



