Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(222) THE BIRD WORLD. 
Bird Protection. 
Mr. J. H. Crawford, a prominent 
authority on natural history, points out 
that while we profess to protect some 
of our birds we take no trouble to see 
that the protection is effective. As a 
matter of fact, he says, it is extremely 
ineffective : 
“ The schoolboy’s string of eggs is no 
shorter than it ever was; nor is there 
any difficulty in getting wild nestlings 
for cage birds and rarer specimens for 
collections. A law weakly adminis¬ 
tered is rather worse than no law, since 
it incites to the very crime it was de¬ 
signed to put down. If a boy is for¬ 
bidden to take jam out of a certain 
cupboard, and no watch is placed on 
the cupboard, the outcome will be to 
put the idea into the boy’s head. A 
fearful pleasure will be added to the 
sweet taste.” 
The Wild Birds’ Protection Acts, Mr. 
Crawford affirms, have led to rather 
wider depredation than would have 
taken place in their absence. 
The Sheep Killer. 
The Scientific American for August 
31st contains an interesting article by 
Mr. G. R. Marriner on the sheep-killing 
Kea. Nearly all the zoological curiosi¬ 
ties to be found in New Zealand are 
birds. The only birds without a wing 
—the giant, but, alas ! extinct Moa—is 
one of these. Another is the Kiwi, 
which has hardly any wings at all, and 
is the only bird in existence which has 
its nostrils opening to the exterior at 
the end of its long beak. Then New 
Zealand has also a bird which beats the 
record for long migratory flights—the 
Godwit, which spends one part of the 
year on the southern islands and the 
rest in Far Siberia. The Kea is a 
mountain Parrot, a little larger than a 
Pigeon, with a strong beak, the upper 
mandible of which is very much curved. 
Here we have an insectivorous and 
berry-eating bird which by popular re¬ 
port is guilty of fastening on the back 
of the sheep and of depriving it of those 
indispensable organs the kidneys. For 
this it has paid a heavy penalty. 
The Fittest and Best. 
Keas are also said to have the aggra¬ 
vating habit of selecting the best and 
fattest sheep in the flock for their iniqui¬ 
tous designs. Mr. Marriner has been 
able to discover only about 30 men who 
have actually seen the Kea engaged at 
its fell task, and each of these has sent in 
a written account, averring his willing¬ 
ness to swear to its accuracy before a 
justice of the piece. Most ingenious 
hypotheses have been advanced by 
naturalists as to the way in which the 
Kea contracted its lethal propensities. 
The most popular is the theory of the 
“ vegetable sheep.” There are two 
large, woolly-looking plants, which at 
a distance look not unlike sheep—the 
Haastia pulvinaris and Raoulia eximia 
—and these contain grubs which pre¬ 
sented a peculiar attraction to the Kea. 
In due course the sheep was introduced 
into the regions of the Kea, and that 
intelligent bird is supposed to have mis¬ 
taken the sheep for the vegetable, and 
thus to have contracted the reprehen¬ 
sible habit of having kidneys for break¬ 
fast. Mr. Marriner is inclined to think 
that there is nothing in this. He is 
rather disposed to believe that the habit 
was induced partly by hunger, partly 
by curiosity, and partly by the existence 
of maggots in dead sheep. Curiosity 
to investigate the nature of a strange 
animal led it to mount the sheep, and 
eventually to tear it open. From eat¬ 
ing the maggots in the dead sheep it is 
but a short step to eat the meat of the 
dead animal, and the lack of further 
carcases suggested to the Kea that it 
was high time to make new ones. And 
it seems to have been doing so ever 
since. 
Wood Pigeons and the Harvest. 
In many parts of the North of 
England the Wood Pigeons recently 
played havoc among the crops. This 
was largely in consequence of the 
wholesale destruction that has long 
been going on of their natural enemies, 
the birds of prey. It is especially 
in consequence of the destruction of 
Magpies. 
