Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/94

90 back to the camp, but no doubt it did directly the sheep went over the rocks. At any rate, less than twenty minutes afterwards I again saw a Kea in the correct position on a sheep’s back, viciously striking, and I distinctly saw it lift its head and give one strong peck, when the sheep immediately collapsed and fell down among the other sheep. I think the Kea then left it. I waited for some time, and then went out as quickly as I could. The mob drew out of the camp, but the injured sheep was still sprawling about. I tried to make it stand, but it could not. I came back next day and found it lying in the same place, but black and very much swollen. I cut its throat, and left my gun in my hiding place during the day and came back at night. I got six of the fifteen Keas that night and the others during the next three weeks. There was never a sheep killed on this camp after the night I saw the sheep struck down.”

The case of a sheep jumping over a precipice in its terror is not an altogether uncommon occurrence, as can be seen by the number of marked sheep found dead at the foot of the precipices.

Writing on this subject, one of my correspondents says:—“I write to say that I have seen the Kea at work at a sheep. The latter was driven frantic by the bird’s attack, and ran wildly in any and every direction, eventually making a bee-line down a steep slope, as if blind, took a ‘header’ over a precipice more than a hundred feet high, and was dashed to pieces on the rocky and shingly bottom. The Kea hung on to its prey until the moment the unfortunate animal left terra firma, when the bird relaxed its hold, and flew down almost on the very track of its prey, when it was lost to view by the writer and a shepherd who was there also.”

Sometimes the sheep tears round the flock until it is played out and cowed, when it sinks to the ground and lies with its neck stretched out, a picture of misery.

At other times the terrified sheep, as if making a last despairing attempt to get rid of its enemy, rushes madly forward in one direction, usually down hill, at a terrific speed, quite oblivious of rocks and pitfalls, the Kea