The Albinos are highly prized by the natives, who will undergo any trouble to capture one alive. Dr. 
Buller rivet, as an instance of this peculiar veneration, the following anecdote :—" A 1 Ka-ka-Korako' was seen 
U | part* of Etangitane, in the Upper Maniwatu, and followed through l he woods as far as the Orona lliver, 
Wen effort h< imr made to take il alive. The Orona people (of another tribe) then took up the chase, and 
followed the bird to the foot of the Kuatimc Range, and although carrying guns, to their infinite credit, they 
al owed it to escape rather than shool at it. in the remote hope that it might hereafter reappear in their district." 
Tlir same authority says of them: "When migrating from one part of the country to another the 
Ka-kas travel in parties of three or more, and generally at a considerable height, their flight being slow and 
men mi ml, and their course 0 direct one. They occasionally alight, apparently for the purpose of resting, and in 
a few minutes resume their laboured flight again. On these occasions the bleached and bare limbs of a dry tree 
,ue always Belected, when one of the requisite elevation is within reach, as affording most fully that which they 
appear to delight in an unobstructed prospect." 
Though so numerous through the North Island, the Ka-kasare not plentiful north of Auckland, although 
the food they mosi affect is there in abundance. 
The onlj difference noticeable in the sexes are the smaller size and less brilliant plumage of the female. 
The number of eggs laid al a time is live, white in colour, and of an ovoid shape, measuring one inch nine lines 
loic_r, by one inch three lines wide at the larger end. 
Description of plumage: forehead, grey ; cheeks and chin, pale red; ear coverts, yellow, tinged w T ith 
red ; neck and hack of head, grey, forming a collar round the throat, which is succeeded by another collar 
of ferruginous red, extending on the breast as far as the abdomen, where it deepens into crimson; shoulders, 
back, and wing coverts, brown ; primaries pale blue, merging into brown at the tips; secondaries and tertiaries, 
dirk metallic green; tail, brown, strongly toothed with red on under surfaces; irides, black; beak and tarsi, 
dark grey. Size of bird, nineteen inches and a-lialf long. 
Babitats . North and South Islands of New Zealand. 
NESTOR ESSLINGII. 
PRINCE OF ESSLING'S PARROT. Genus : Nestor. 
\ BRY little is y, t known of the habits of this bird. Its range is limited to the west coast of the South Island 
y of New Zealand, among the precipitous woody cliffs in the neighbourhood of George Sound, and from 
thence along the coast to Mill'ord Sound. It is essentially a bird of the mountains and highest altitudes, 
as is proved by the fact that it has never yet been seen in the lowland forests. In its habits it is more active 
than the common Nestor, and its flight is more hawk-like in its direct rapidity; sometimes in the act of flying 
it w ill make a sudden swoop to the ground after a manner totally unlike the Parrots in general. The cry it utters 
is more shrill and wild than that of the Ka-kas. 
Till a very recent date it was uenerally supposed that this species was not only the finest bird of its 
genus, but of the whole Parrot family; the observations of Dr. Hector, however (who himself obtained the only 
tun specimens known to Buller), have partly destroyed that erroneous notion, for instead of being larger, he has 
proved that it is appreciably smaller than the other Nestors ; its bill is more slender, and the upper mandible 
is reduced to a finer point. The general colouring of the plumage is like that of the Nestor Productus, 
though it differs both from this Parrot and from Nestor Hypopolias in some few particulars. They each have 
the tail feathers strongly toothed with red on the under surfaces; the Esslingii has no such marks, and the 
toothing on the inner webs of the primiaries is less clearly defined, the light-coloured interspaces being more 
freckled with brown. 
It was long a moot point with our most eminent New Zealand ornithologists whether this species 
Should he treated as a distinct one, or merely as an aberrant variety of Nestor Meridionalis, but at length 
Dr. Finsch and Dr. Buller have decided to treat it as an accidental variety of the common Ka-ka, differing only 
about the breast, which is grey with brown terminial margins, and a broad yellowish-white transverse band 
straight across tin* abdomen. 
Habitat : West Coast of the South Island. 
