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ON THE HABITS OF THE KEA, OR MOUNTAIN 



PARROT OF NEW ZEALAND. 



By Taylor White.* 



I have been prompted to write this paper on receipt of a 

 letter from Dr. Alfred R. Wallace, F.R.S., who still holds to 

 the old-time stories given of this bird long ago, and follows the 

 lead of those who had but a second-hand knowledge of this 

 bird, and so falls into errors, such as its leaving the berries of 

 the forest-trees and taking to picking the kidney-fat out of live 

 sheep running on the mountain-side, and being gradually trained 

 thereto by commencing to sample the carcases of sheep hanging 

 on the gallows or slaughter-place of the sheep-farmer. I am 

 merely quoting from memory, and so am liable to vary the exact 

 words. But I remember being astonished on reading of the 

 Kea living in the forest, for I never even during the severest 

 winters saw it perched on a tree, and, further, the small patches 

 of trees in the alpine valleys are all of one kind, a species of 

 Fagus y which were called by the settlers black-birch. The fruit 

 or " beech mast " of these trees is very minute and rare, and of 

 little, if any, service to the birds of other species. 



I have during hard winters tamed the Kaka (Nestor meri- 

 dionalis), which in a starved condition might settle on the house, 

 when I would approach with a piece of raw meat on the point 

 of a long stick, like a fishing-rod, but never a Kea, Nestor notabilis ; 

 and the only birds I remember picking at the carcases of sheep on 

 the gallows were flocks of the newly-arrived bird, the small White- 

 eye, Zosterops, which came to New Zealand about the year 1860, 

 as well as I can fix the date. 



The berries on the ranges, or mountain-side, were few and of 

 little food-value, the chief in point of size being the snowberry, 

 but it was seldom seen. My opinion is that the Kea lived 

 mainly on the lichen growing on the rocks, and on grubs when 

 obtainable. The lichen would, in places where the rocks were 

 steep, be free from a covering of snow when all else was snowed 

 up to a depth of three feet or more. 



The Kea always lived high up the mountains a long distance 



* From the 'Transactions' of the New Zealand Institute, vol. xxvii., 

 pp. 273—280, May, 1895. See Potts, ' Zoologist,' 1881, pp. 290—301. 



