the power of flight, and uses its wings 

 only as a sort of parachute to break its 

 fall in descending from a rock or a tree 

 to its accustomed feeding-ground. To 

 ascend a steep place or a tree, it climbs, 

 parrot-like, with its hooked claws, up the 

 surface of the trunk or the face of the 

 precipice. 



Even more aberrant in its ways, how- 

 ever, than the burrowing owl-parrot, is 

 that other strange and hated New Zea- 

 land lory, the kea, which, alone among 

 its kind, has adjured the gentle ancestral 

 vegetarianism of the cockatoos and 

 macaws, in favor of a carnivorous diet of 

 remarkable ferocity. And what is 

 stranger still, this evil habit has been de- 

 veloped in the kea since the colonization 

 of New Zealand by the British, the most 

 demoralizing of new-comers, as far as 

 all aborigines are concerned. The Eng- 

 lish settlers have taught the Maori to 

 wear silk hats and to drink strong liquors, 

 and they have thrown temptation in the 

 way of even the once innocent native par- 

 rot. Before the white man came, the kea 

 was a mild-mannered, fruit-eating or 

 honey-sucking bird. But as soon as 

 sheep-stations were established on the 

 island these degenerate parrots began to 

 acquire a distinct taste for raw mutton. 

 At first they ate only the ofifal that was 

 thrown out from the slaughter-houses, 

 picking the bones as clean of meat as a 

 dog or a jackal. But in course of time, 

 as the taste for blood grew, a new and 

 debased idea entered their heads. If 

 dead sheep are good to eat, are not living 

 ones ? The keas, having pondered deeply 

 over this abstruse problem, solved it in 

 the affirmative. Proceeding to act upon 

 their convictions, they invented a truly 

 hideous mode of procedure. A number 

 of birds hunt out a weakly member of a 

 flock, almost always after dark. The 

 sheep is worried to death by the combined 

 efforts of the parrots, some of whom 

 perch themselves upon the animal's back 

 and tear open the flesh, their object being 

 to reach the kidneys, which they devour 

 at the earliest possible moment. As many 

 as two hundred ewes are said to have been 

 killed in a single night on one "station" — 

 ranch, we should call it. I need hardly 

 say that the New^ Zealand sheep-farmer 

 resents this irregular procedure, so op- 



posed to all ideas of humanity, to say 

 nothing of good-farming, and, as a re- 

 sult, the existence of the kea is now lim- 

 ited to a few years. But from a purely 

 psychological point of view the case is in- 

 teresting, as being the best recorded in- 

 stance of the growth of a new and com- 

 plex instinct actually under the eyes of 

 human observers. 



A few words as to the general coloring 

 of the parrot group. Tropical forestine 

 birds have usually a ground tone of green 

 because that color enables them best to 

 escape notice among the monotonous 

 verdure of equatorial woodland scenery. 

 In the north, it is true, green is a very 

 conspicuous- color; but that is only be- 

 cause for half the year our trees are bare, 

 and even during the other half they lack 

 that ''breadth of tropic shade" which 

 characterizes the forests of all hot coun- 

 tries. Therefore, in temperate climates, 

 the common ground-tone of birds is 

 brown, to harmonize with the bare 

 boughs and leafless twigs, the dead grass 

 or stubble. But in the ever-green tropics,, 

 green is the proper hue for concealment 

 or defense. Therefore the parrots, the 

 most purely tropical family of birds on 

 earth, are chiefly greenish ; and among 

 the smaller and more defenceless sorts, 

 like the little love-birds, where the need 

 for protection is greatest, the green of 

 the plumage is almost unbroken. Green, 

 in truth, must be regarded as the basal 

 parrot tint, from which all other colors 

 are special decorative variations. 



But fruit-eating and flower-feeding 

 creatures — such as butterflies and hum- 

 ming birds — seeking their food among 

 the brilliant flowers and bright berries, 

 almost invariably acquire a taste for va- 

 ried coloring, and by the aid of the fac- 

 tor in evolution, known as sexual selec- 

 tion, this taste stereotypes itself at last 

 upon their wings and plumage. They 

 choose their mates for their attractive 

 coloring. As a consequence, all the 

 larger and more greg^arious parrots, in 

 which the need for concealment is less, 

 tend to diversify the fundamental green 

 of their coats with red, yellow or blue, 

 which in some cases takes possession of 

 the entire body. The largest kinds of all, 

 like the great blue and yellow or crim- 

 son macaws, are as gorgeous as birds well 



104 



