Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/43

Rh Alps, from the Humboldt Mountains in the south to Kelly’s Hill in Westland. Although frequently met with on the open alpine and sub-alpine hillside, I consider the bird essentially one of the forest limit, where it may be seen in numbers at the junction of the forest and sub-alpine meadows and in the Nothofagus forest where such are pierced by river-beds.”

In my travels in the back country, I have frequently made the Kea’s acquaintance, mostly around the head-waters of the Rakaia River and also around Mount Torlesse, and, though I have seen it up as high as 5000 feet or more, my observations agree entirely with Dr. Cockayne’s statement.

One writer even ridicules the idea of Keas being forest birds, for he says, “I remember being astonished on reading of the Kea living in the forest, for I never, even during the severest winter, saw it perched on trees.” It is a well-known fact now that they commonly settle on trees; as early as 1862 Sir Julius von Haast saw one in a tree near Lake Wanaka, and since his time numerous similar testimonies have been borne.

I have, on several occasions, seen the Kea perching on trees. Once in January, 1903, in a forest behind the Glenthorne Homestead, and while camping for several days near the source of the Avoca river, I and others constantly saw them flying in and out of the forest some 500 feet above us.

The fact that these birds were seen so low down in summer disproves the old statement of many writers that they come down to lower altitudes only in heavy weather. Each time that I saw them low down it was mid-summer, and the weather was warm and clear.

At first I thought that possibly the Keas had come to live at low altitudes since they had developed sheep-killing propensities, in order to be near to their quarry; but the fact that before they had learned that habit, namely, in 1866-67, Sir Julius von Haast saw more Keas below than above snow-line disproves the supposition. The very fact that, in winter, the heavy falls of snow, accompanied by cold biting winds, drive the Kea to lower altitudes, seems to me to