120 MOUNTAIN PARROT. 



or the chattering Parrakeets. It has also been seen feeding on the 

 ground in the moonlight, and can hardly be esteemed an arboreal 

 bird." 



The testers are a family of flowersuckers, the tongue being furnished 

 at its extremity with a fine brush-like or filmentous development for 

 that especial purpose; and yet, strange to relate, the subject of the 

 present notice is said to have departed from the habits of its congeners 

 in this respect of late years, and to have acquired a partiality for 

 quite another kind of food, as we shall presently see. 



The Keas are sprightly birds and active, whether on the wing, or 

 when threading their way through the woodlands of their native wilds. 

 On the ground they progress by a series of hops, instead of walking 

 with the waddling awkward gait of the true Parrots, and are quick 

 and sudden in their movements; springing in a cage from perch to 

 perch with the agility of a Sparrow. 



During the summer their food consists in a great measure of the 

 nectar of flowers, a banquet of the gods, which, however, they in 

 common with their relations, the Ka-Kas, vary by feasting on grubs 

 and insects of all kinds, as well as on seeds and roots, so that they 

 may very properly be called omnivorous. 



When its native mountains, however, are capped with snow, and the 

 flowers and the grubs have all disappeared, the Kea descends into the 

 plains, visits the " stations " of the settlers, where, to quote Mr. Potts, 

 11 it soon finds and appreciates that indispensable requisite of every 

 out-station, the meat gallows, which it usually visits by night; beef 

 and mutton suffering equally from its attack, and even the drying 

 sheep skins are not neglected/' 



Were this all, the Mountain Parrot might be pardoned; for what 

 will not extremity of hunger prompt a starving creature to do ? but 

 after all, the heads of sheep and cattle are what it makes a meal of, 

 when food of no other description is to be obtained ; and these having 

 been cast away as valueless by the stockmen and butchers, no great 

 harm can be said to be effected by the theft. 



Mr. Potts, however, relates, on the authority of the Otago Daily 

 Times, how "for the last three years the sheep belonging to a settler 

 in the Wanaka district, appeared afflicted with what was thought to 

 be a new kind of disease, for which the neighbours and shepherds 

 were equally at a loss to account, never having seen anything of the 

 kind before. 



" The first appearance of the supposed disease is a patch of 

 raw flesh on the loins of a sheep, about the size of a man's hand, 

 from which matter continually runs down the side; taking the wool 



