Carcase-Eating.

At the St. Louis Exhibition, according to Mr. Guthrie, of Burke's Pass, the New Zealand Tourist Department represented the kea as follows: “The kea, a species of parrot that fastens itself to the back of the sheep, picks out the fat surrounding the kidneys, leaving the animal to die a lingering death.” From the accounts that I have received, this description is very erroneous, for the kea does not only eat the kidney-fat, but in many instances the whole carcase is devoured. People who kill the birds by poisoning state that often the difficulty is to find a carcase with enough flesh on to poison. Mr. Guthrie says, “My experience is that the kea prefers putrid meat to fresh. In shooting them, before dying they generally disgorge, and in the hundreds I have seen, over 90 per cent. disgorged putrid meat.”

Mr. Morgan writes as follows: “Some writers say that this bird won't eat dead sheep, but they will, and seem to enjoy them. They will get on a dead sheep and clean every bit of flesh off the bones.”

Mr. Ford, of Pembroke, Lake Wanaka, says, “I was engaged for some time in destroying the keas by arsenic and strychnine mixed. I would go out on the hill in the afternoon and wait about until the sun got weak, as then the keas would gather and make in the direction to where they had mutton I would then follow them up and always find one or more dead sheep killed by them. I would poison the carcases thoroughly, but the trouble was to find a carcase with sufficient flesh to poison, as they devour the sheep completely, leaving nothing but wool and bones. Cases when I have found sheep partly eaten, on coming to them next day I would pick up as many as twenty-eight dead keas near the carcase.”

So sure are the men that the keas eat the dead sheep that for the purpose of killing the birds they often camp near a carcase. Mr. E. Cameron, Pembroke, Lake Wanaka, says, “The way we used to do if we did not find a dead sheep on the ground was to kill one and camp neat it at night. Often as many as fifty keas would come and eat it, and they are that tame that every one could be shot.” From this and other evidence which I have received there seems little doubt that the birds will eat almost the whole of the carcase, and they certainly do not confine themselves to the kidney-fat.

This naturally leads up to the question as to whether the kea's beak, filthy from a recent gorge of decaying meat, does not sometimes cause blood-poisoning in the next live sheep it attacks, and so a very small scar might be sufficient to cause death. Mr. Guthrie, writing on this question, says, “I visited