THE KEA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20708, 4 May 1929, Page 10

THE KEA.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In 1881 we were prospecting the Eyre Mountains, of Southland, and were camped in a tent above the bush opposite Burwood Station. One morning in a sonwstorm my partner told me to take the gun and shoot a kea that was trying to make a hole in the tent to get at some fat mutton inside on, the ridge pole. The bird flew a few feet to a tree and was shot. Two days later we were shooting rabbits when fog and snow came on, we sheltered by a big rock for a time. As the fog lifted my partner said, “ Look, I am told by shepherds they never saw **t,k ea a sheep.” Below us, within shot was one of the fey unmustered sheep, in a snowdrift. A lea was on his back, and had taken off some wool and was well into kidney fat. My partner fired and killed the kea. The sheep, still alive, was shot by the writer. Some will say that the kea did not kill that sheep. What chance of life had the sheep? The same year, camped at a shepherd's hut above the Upper Mavora Lake, ws saw three splendid walking stick guns, made and imported for shooting keas. You first removed the ferrule, turned the handle, pulled back to the right, inserted a , small steel cartridge, returned the handle, and pressed a button. This will prove that keas were bad 60 years ago. The manager of those stations at , that date was a Mr Thomas, with headquarters at MararoaStation, on the river of that name. The kea will never be killed out on the Crown lands of the Southern Alps.—l am, etc., Fred Daw. Oamaru, May 2.