THE MOUNTAIN KEA OF NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6261, 10 December 1881, Page 7

THE MOUNTAIN KEA OF NEW ZEALAND.

« Tiikre is now in the "Zoo" a very remarkable bird, the Nestor notabilis, or Mountain Kea, of Ne»v Zealand. It is a parrot of strong frame and powerful bill and elaws, which were used, like those of all parrots, for obtaining a vegetable diet until the colonists introduced sheep and pigs. As soon as this was done the Kea seems to have abandoned vegetable food, and to have taken entirely to flesh-eating. He attacks sick or dying or disabled sheep, and with his powerful cutting beak opens a passage through the back, and eats the intestines. Even healthy animals are sometimes assailed by the Nestor notabilis, and there are sheepruns in New Zealand where considerable losses have been incurred through these strangely degenerated birds. The specimen in the Zoological Gardens gave as much trouble to capture as an eagle, tearing the clothes of the shepherd who knocked i 1 dewn while pouncing on a lamb, and lacerating his hands. The Kea scorns cooked meat, biscuits, fruit, or seeds, and likes raw mutton better than any food. He wil: tear the skin and flesh from a sheep's head after the furious fashion of a vulture, leaving nothing but the bare skull. He af one time holds the morsels in his lifted claw, after the style of parrots, and at anothei "rips them under his feet while rending witl his beak like a hawk. This is a very curious example of change of habit, for there is everj reason to believe that before sheep and pigs were introduced into New Zealand the Ker was as frugivorous in its meals as most, if no' all other parrots, lie wiil now eat pork am beef as well as mutton, and has become, ii fact, utterly and hopelessly carnivorous. I' is to be feared, after this example, tnatemptation is often fatal to birds and beast as well as man. Had it not been for Captau Cook and the English sheep flocks, thi Nestor notabilis would have lived and die( innocent of crime ; but now its bloodstainei carcase is suspended outside many a sheep fold in Otago.—European Mail.