122 MOUNTAIN PARROT. 



authorities who rule the Gardens, placed the denizens of snow-capped 

 mountains in the Parrot House, where a tropical heat is generally- 

 maintained, with the result that anyone in the least acquainted with 

 the habits of these birds might have anticipated, and a resultant loss 

 to science, that will better be appreciated by and bye, when the last 

 Kea has joined his congener of Philip Island in "the happy hunting 

 grounds", from which is no return. 



" Where the Keas so attack the sheep", continues the writer in the 

 Otago Daily Times, "the elevation of the country is from four 

 thousand to five thousand feet above the sea level, and they only do 

 so in the winter time I" 



Yet, so true is the saying, "give a dog a bad name and hang him", 

 these curious and really beautiful birds, that devour so many noxious 

 grubs during the summer months in their mountain home among the 

 New Zealand Alps, are doomed, on the authority of a newspaper article, 

 to speedy extermination; though the same writer concludes his sensa- 

 tional story with the remark, "On a station, some thirty miles distant 

 from the other, and belonging to the same owner, at the same altitude, 

 in the same district, and where the birds are plentiful, they do not 

 attack the sheep in that way." 



Poor Keas ! when you have been all trapped, shot, and otherwise 

 destroyed, the concluding paragraph, from the article in the Daily Times 

 of Otago, will perhaps be remembered as well as those that preceded it, 

 and people will say "what a pity! how that wretched Gossus ligniperda 

 (or whatever the goat-moth's New Zealand equivalent may be) has 

 increased and multiplied since the mountain Parrots have disappeared;" 

 but then it will be too late to remedy the sad mistake. 



Inhabiting as they do the slopes of the New Zealand Southern 

 Alps, the Kea Parrots are quite indifferent to cold, and could no doubt 

 be readily acclimatised in this country, were any amateurs bold enough 

 to introduce into our midst a bird that rightly or wrongly has incurred 

 such an evil reputation. 



It is only during very severe weather that it descends from its 

 native fastnesses into the plains, and then it is want of food, and not 

 the dread of cold that impels it to migrate. Those who have visited 

 its alpine haunts report it to be still comparatively common there; and 

 at the heads of all the principal rivers in the Canterbury Province it 

 is to be seen soaring aloft above the rocks, or foraging amongst the 

 close stunted alpine vegetation; but in the more settled districts of 

 the colony its numbers are much diminished, and from some places 

 where it was formerly abundant it has entirely disappeared. 



The first Kea seen in the Eegent's Park Gardens was acquired 



