G. H. Gurney—Breeding Notes from the Keswick Aviaries for 1933 75


n fit setting. Seen in an aviary or cage, he isn’t the same bird as the

•one seen amid the glittering snow-capped peaks of his native home.

Bluebells in a jam jar are not like those in the misty blue haze in the

beech woods in the spring. And so it is with the Kea. He loses a

great deal of his charm when taken out of his proper setting. I have

taken people to see the Keas and they have usually been astonished

when they saw them. “ Why, that can’t be a Kea, it’s a nice bird,

I always thought it was a horrible thing, something like a vulture ”,

is the remark usually made by the lay person on seeing the Kea for

the first time.


Between the years of 1920 and 1928 the Government paid a subsidy

•on over twenty-nine thousand Kea heads.


I was told of a district on the western slopes of the Alps wdiere

Kakas and Keas were found in the vicinity, but I was told that the

two birds, although so closely allied, never consorted together.


Perhaps I have talked too much about this bird, but I must ask to

be forgiven, for to my mind it is one of the most interesting birds

in the whole world, and so many lies have been written about it that

I feel I must say something to vindicate its character.



BREEDING NOTES FROM THE KESWICK

AVIARIES FOR 1933


By G. H. Gurney


The following notes are a rather belated account of some of the

more interesting species which bred at Keswick during the past summer.

■Considering the abnormally hot dry summer we experienced in Norfolk,

us everywhere else, perhaps one might have expected more species to

have nested, but, owing to the abundance of live insect food, those

which did breed had more chance of rearing their young successfully

than in a cold damp summer, when live food, so absolutely necessary

for the majority of young birds, was scarce and difficult to get.


Gallinaceous birds, in good-sized pens where the grass was allowed

to grow long, were able to secure a fine supply of live insects and on

our light soil the supply of fresh ants’ eggs was unlimited ; and how



