OBEEN OBOUND PABBOT. 
123 
caverns, and that while arranging for their winter quarters, and before 
dispersing for the summer, they become very noisy, and raise a deafening 
clamour/^ 
Are we to infer from the above quotation that these birds are in 
the habit, as Swallows are said to be, of hybernating? we think not: 
the practice is one foreign to bird nature; birds are incapable, as a 
rule, of enduring prolonged abstinence, and the winters in New Zealand 
are not of such severity as to deprive the indigenous races of their 
accustomed food, as happens in higher latitudes. 
We are unable to record the “native” name of the Green Ground 
Parrot, but the Owl Parrot {Strigops hahroptilus) is called by the 
Maoris “Kakapo^’, no doubt from its cry: like its Green Ground 
relative, it is weak of wing, and, as Mr. Wood continues, “seldom 
trusts itself in the air, taking but a very short flight when it rises 
from the ground. Neither it is seen much in trees, preferring to in- 
habit the ground, and making regular paths to and from its nest, by 
means of which its habitation may be discovered by one who knows 
the habits of the bird. Those tracks are about a foot in width, and 
so closely resemble the paths worn by the footsteps of human beings 
that they have been mistaken for such by travellers ” : and might very 
readily become the means of saving life; for a man lost in the “bush”, 
and nearly dead from starvation, following one of them up, thinking 
it led to a human dwelling, and finding a nest of young birds, as large 
as a good-sized fowl, would be able to keep himself alive on their 
succulent flesh, until discovered by the party sent out to look for him. 
It has been conjectured that the absence of predatory mammals in 
New Zealand is the main reason of the departure of these curious 
birds from the common habits of the race; and that from seeking, 
unmolested, their food on the ground, they, in the lapse of ages, 
acquired terrestrial preferences, and lost, or almost lost, the use of their 
wings from sheer long-continued inaction — surely a lesson for indolent 
folk, who prefer riding their thoroughbred horses, or being driven 
about in their luxurious carriages, to using the means of locomotion 
provided for them by nature. 
This hypothesis, however, will scarcely account for the presence of 
PezoplioriAS in Australia and Tasmania, where small predatory animals 
are found in great abundance, and terrestrial Parrots are not by any 
means uncommon. 
The late John Gould, P.E.S., frequently found nests of these birds 
under the stumps of trees, and among rocks; the eggs were laid on 
the bare ground, in a little hollow evidently fashioned by the birds 
themselves, and without any attempt at nest making. Whatever may 
