Sydney Porter—Notes on New Zealand Birds



67



I hardly liked to say that he was lying, so I merely said that at that

rate they might easily dispense with the services of the slaughterman.

But with the tales of sheep-killing it is always the old story of some¬

one who knew someone else whose friend had seen them.


No bird in the world is more malignantly libelled than the Kea,

and usually by people who know nothing whatever about it.


It is hard to imagine a bird, belonging to a family whose members

are confined solely to the tropics, being able to sustain itself in such

inhospitable regions, especially in the winter time, and sometimes

even in the summer when bitter winds and furious blizzards roar up

the alpine valleys where the Kea makes its home. For days at a time

torrential rains beat down, and the valleys fill up with drifting clouds

and mists. Sometimes the winds are so strong that it is impossible

to stand upright.


Not only does this bird manage to maintain itself, but it is able

to “do itself very well 55 as they say in Yorkshire. With a specially

adapted beak it digs amongst the alpine vegetation finding succulent

roots, etc., it also feeds to a great extent on the berries of the dwarfed

trees. It is a remarkable thing that some of the stunted trees which

grow only a few feet high bear larger berries than the same species

which grows to the height of a hundred feet or more in the low-land

forests. Most of the droppings which I examined contained the

seeds of various alpine plants ; as these were intact the bird must act

as the distributing agent for many of the berry-bearing shrubs of those

regions.


I have often seen them pull out quite large stones from the hill¬

sides obviously looking for something underneath ; possibly for grubs

or insects of some sort.


Keas are fascinating birds to watch ; never in my travels have

I met a bird of such interest. The chief trait in its character is un¬

bounded curiosity. One has only to sit down quietly, especially

in the evenings and in a quarter of an hour or so one is surrounded by

a crowd of these inquisitive birds. They never seem to alight near

one, but usually a distance away and with a kind of a hop, skip, and

a jump gradually get closer and closer until at last one is surrounded

on every side by throngs of quietly speculating birds. They come



