Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/135

Rh from the very first in the habit of rising rather wild, and I got to know it well from an unusual call that it had. However, although I got eight out of the nine, the killing went on as badly as ever. Sometimes as many as three sheep would be killed in one night, but, try as I would, I could not steal unawares upon the culprit, for he was always alert and became very sparing with his peculiar call. After many nights of weary walk and disappointment (I had a ten mile tramp each time, five miles there and five miles back), it struck me that its call, after it had flown away, always came from the same direction. This was across a deep gorge, among some almost inaccessible rocks.

“The next day I went and carefully examined the rocks, and I could see in an open crevice, about sixty feet above me, a hole, which I was satisfied was the Kea’s run. I came to the conclusion that this would be a likely place for him to spend the time after his night’s carnival; and I determined, therefore, at first full moon to bring my gun and watch below for his home coming.

“After a good many disappointments, I was sitting on a stone about three o’clock one clear frosty morning in August just beneath the crevices, and was just dropping off to sleep, with my gun on my knees, when a black shadow crossed the stones at my feet.

“I looked up, and saw a Kea just alighting on the edge of the rock. I had it down in a twinkling. It was no doubt the old bird, for in my time on the station there were no more sheep killed in the camp.”

The last general method employed is a very effective one, though sometimes risky, and consists in poisoning the dead carcases of the sheep that have been killed by the Kea. Strychnine is sometimes used alone; but more often this is mixed with arsenic, which is found to be very effective.

A dead sheep, preferably one killed by the Kea, is half skinned and the poison is rubbed in, sometimes the Kea wounds alone being treated.

During the night the birds come to feed on the remains of their earlier carousal, and usually by daylight a number