Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/101



I am almost certain that too much emphasis has been laid on the fact that the Kea, a member of the brush-tongued parrot family, has changed its ordinary diet and taken to eating meat and fat. When we consider the natural diet of the bird, the change seems more or less natural, for there seems to be very little difference between eating a large plump grub and a piece of fat.

The more interesting fact is that, in addition to this, it has changed its character, and, from being a harmless parrot, has become a bird of prey of no mean order.

Other birds, in confinement at all events, have been known to eat meat, though in nature they seem to content themselves with fruit and seeds. For example, many parrots and cockatoos seem thoroughly to enjoy cleaning up bones with particles of flesh on them. Again, in New Zealand, the little white-eye (Zosterops caerulescens), whose natural food is blight, small insects and fruit, can be easily trapped, in winter especially, by means of suet fat or meat bones, both of which it devours readily.

Therefore it seems to me that there is nothing very wonderful in the fact that the Kea enjoys a little meat and fat in addition to its ordinary food.

Another interesting case is that reported by Captain Hende, of British East Africa, and forwarded to “Nature” by Professor E. Ray Lankester, on 10th August, 1900. It runs as follows:—“The common rhinoceros bird (Buphaga