Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/97

Rh bottom of the gully was reached. When I went to investigate, I found the sheep not quite dead, but bleating with evident pain, it would appear on account of a hole in its back close up to the shoulder.”

Mr. H. Heckler, of Lumsden, writes:—“I was keeping boundary at the Gladstone Gorge after snow muster, and was gathering the stragglers off the high country, when I came across about twenty Keas. Two of them were on a sheep’s back, the balance were flying round him (a stray wether), making a terrible noise. The sheep was going at full speed down the spur. I watched him where he ran to, and followed him down for about three miles. When I got down the sheep was dead, with two holes (one on each side of the backbone) in him, and most of the mob of Keas were picking out the kidney fat. I crawled to the rock where the poor sheep was lying, and the Keas were so busy that I killed three with my stick.”

Mr. Andrew Watherston, writing to me of his experiences in 1904, says:—“I was looking out a mob of wethers, and found that the Keas had been killing them and there were eight dead. As it came on a dense fog I had to return to my hut. Early on the following morning I went out to the wethers again. Arriving where the sheep were camped sometime before sunrise, I could hear the Keas calling, and following up the sound I got to where there were about forty of them. They had about therethree [sic] or four hundred wethers rounded up. The sheep were huddled close together, and the Keas were flying over them, and alighting on their backs. When the Keas started to pick the back of a sheep, it would start to run round and round the mob; the Kea would rise, but as soon as the sheep stopped the bird was on its back again. This continued for a little time; the sheep, apparently getting sulky, lay down with its neck stretched out and its lower jaw resting flat on the ground, when it showed no further resistance but allowed the Kea to pick away at its back. I never knew a sheep, after it once sulked, to show any further resistance. I shot nineteen Keas and left the mob, but, on looking round, I found that they had killed