BIRD BUCCANEER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 76, 30 March 1935, Page 7

BIRD BUCCANEER.

THE KEA PARROT. INCREASE IN NUMBERS. GOVERNMENT AID WANTEJJ. In the mountain country of the South Island; the kea parrot is again increasing in numbers; so severe have been the depredations of keas among the Marlborough and North Canterbury flocks that sheep farmers are complaining, and the Government has been approached concerning the possibility of restoring the bounty on kea. heads. Owing to the remote and inaccessible nature of the places in which he prefers to nest, it is unlikely that the wily kea will ever be exterminated. In the days when there was a price on his head ranging from half a crown to seven shillings, he became rare and wild; but although every man's hand was against him, and almost every shepherd and musterer carried a shotgun or a pea-rifle over his shoulder, the kea survived. Professional kea-hunters took up the pursuit, and devised many ingenious methods of hunting. To be at all successful, it was essen- j tial to be on the mountain-tops at j dawn, when the birds were on the move; | in addition, many a lonely vigil over the bodies of kea-killed sheep was necessary if the hunter hoped to obtain a good bag. Yet some shooters earned good money; in the days just after the war, when the bounty in that district stood at half a crown, £75 worth of kea heads were at one time hanging in strings in the whare at Mesopotamia, Samuel Butler's old run at the head of the Rangitata. Hunters' Rus«s. Poison and trap and guns were the favourite methods of slaying the kea, but individual hunters perfected other schemes. There was a man who used to ascend to the hill-tops with a yard of red rag to attract the inquisitive fowl, but the use of live keas, snared with a wire hook when playing about the

camp, was by far the most profitable ruse. There was a story current of a man who, finding himself without cartridges in the company of half-a-dozen young birds, took advantage of their insatTable curiosity. He went for a short walk, the keas hopping along after him. Presently he slipped oyer a rocky and, having a stout stick in hand, wafted till the first bird came and peered inquisitively over at liiin. A deft crack with the stick, and the bird tumbled down beside him. One by one the other birds came to find out what had happened to their leader, and the same happened also to them. When the keas grew few and far between, and there was no longer a living to be made by killing them, the professional shooters abandoned the irame, and took to rabbiting, or deerculling. So the kea had peace, and proceeded to increase and re-establish himself. Buccaneer Among Birds. The kea is a buccaneer among birds. Careless of his unpopularity, lie swaggers into camp, flaunting his olive green and orange plumage, almost anywhere in the vicinty of the main range of the Southern Alps. Scornful of any danger, j ignorant of the price on his head, lie proceeds to open and explore any pack or bundle left unguarded. He is something of a humourist; sliding is one ol his joys, and at the Morraine Hut on the Matthias campers have been awakened long before dawn by keas tobogganing down the tin roof, tumbling off the eaves, and flapping back shrieking with delight to queue up for another tU There has been a good deal of controversy at various times at to whether the young, birds or the old do the killing, and it has even been suggested that the kea does not attack the sheep at all, but no back country sheepman lias, the least doubt of this. In the Lake Coleridge district, where there are always a number of keas, live sheep may occasionally—and by no means seldom be seen with terribly lacerated backs; the keas have been actually observed on the live slieep, and when certain birds have been shot the depredations have ceased, at least temporarily.