A CURIOUS BIRD.

Westport Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1967, 17 January 1882, Page 3

A CURIOUS BIRD.

There is now in the London " Zoo" a very remarkable bird, the Nestor notabilis, or Mountain Kea, of New Zealand. It is a parrot of strong frame and powerful bill and claws, 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 the sick or dying or disabled sheep, aud with his powerful cutting beak opens a passage through the back, and eats the intestines. Even healthy animals are sometimes assailed by the Nestor nota bilies, and there are sheep runs 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 it down while pouncing on a lamb, aud lacerated his hands. The Kea scorns cooked meat, biscuits, fruit, or seed, and likes raw mutton better than any food. He will tear the skin and flesh from a sheep's head after the furious fashion of a vulture, leaving nothing but the bare skull. He at one time holds the morsels in his lifted claw, after the style of parrots, and at another time grips them under his feet while rending them with his beak like a hawk. This is a very curious example of change of habit, for there is every reason to believe that before sheep and pigs were introduced into New Zealand the Kea was a frugiverous in its means as most, if not all, other parrots. He will now eat pork and beef as well as mutton, and has become, in fact, utterly and hopelessly carnivorous. It is to be feared aftpr this example, that temptation is often fatal to birds and beasts as well as man. Had it not been for Captain Cook and the English sheep ilocks. the Nestor notabilis would have lived and died innocent of crime ; but now its blood striped carcase is suspended outside many a sheepfold in Otago.