Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/91

Rh “Sometimes the wound penetrates to the colon, when, if the animal recovers, this artificial anus is formed. It may be on the left, but is more frequently on the right side. It has been suggested that the bird aims at the colon in search of its vegetable contents, but the Kea’s carnivorous appetite has been too frequently noticed to necessitate any such hypothesis.”

One of my correspondents gives the following account:—“One solitary wether I found on the Kingston Flat, still alive and standing, with a hole half-way down the right flank, and about eighteen inches of the double of his small gut on the ground. I afterwards saw him dead at the same place.”

Often the birds seem to delight in prolonging the sheep’s misery, for a shepherd writes as follows:— “Along with another shepherd, I was out on the ranges attending to the sheep, when we heard the Keas making a great noise. On looking up to where they were, we saw a sheep standing on a ledge of rocks; one Kea kept jumping on to the sheep’s back and pecking at him. The sheep was trying to get away, but could not get off the ledge. Evidently it had been chased by the Keas, and it had jumped on to the ledge. The Keas were at the sheep for fully half-an-hour, and we could not get near to drive them off. When we left, the birds were still worrying the sheep.”

Another shepherd gives the following account:—“I have noticed a wounded sheep standing on steep faces, and the Keas walking round and round it. The sheep would also keep turning round so as to face its tormentors, butting at them and trying to keep them off. They would keep on until the sheep would lose its footing and would fall to rise no more.”

The position and attitude of the bird while on the sheep’s back is well described in the following:—“It was in the afternoon, I was mustering in Boundary Gully, Mount Cook Station, at the time, and had a mob of sheep in hand and was about two chains away, when a Kea, one of several that were flying around, settled on a sheep. The beast at