Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/99

Rh where the helpless benumbed sheep have been literally torn to pieces while alive by the relentless birds. Even when men, wading waist high in the snow, climb up to dig the sheep out, the brutal birds will often not leave their prey, but fall victims to the musterer’s alpenstock.

Here are some accounts from eye-witnesses.

Mr. McIntosh, of Lake Tekapo, says:—“I saw again another mob stuck in the snow, in a very rough place which we shepherds could not get to. I watched from the other side of the gully, and, by the aid of my glasses, saw the parrots actually eating the sheep alive while they were caught in the snow.”

Mr. Logan, another of my correspondents, says:—“The sheep were held up by snow, and there were thirteen Keas attacking them. They had some killed and others maimed beyond recovery. They were sitting on the living and the dead, but only one or two of the birds seemed to be attacking the living.”

Mr. Hugh McKenzie writes:—“In 1884, on Lorne Peak Station, Wakatipu, in the month of July, there came a heavy fall of snow. One morning early, myself and two other men went out to look up the sheep; at 10 a.m. we sighted a mob. As we got within about a quarter of a mile of them, we could make out a number of Keas flying about the sheep, making a great screaming noise. We at once hastened on to the sheep, which were stuck on a point of the spur about 3,000ft. in altitude. At a distance of three or four hundred yards, we saw two sheep floundering in the snow with a Kea perched on the rump of each sheep, and at work on the loins. These sheep would be distant from the mob about eighty yards, and fully twenty yards from each other. As we sighted them, however, notwithstanding our singing out, and hurrying up to the sheep, neither Kea quitted his position until we were within twenty yards of them. They, however, did not damage the sheep enough to cause death, as we arrived just in time.”

The last instance is given by Mr. O’Brian:—“Three of us were sent to muster the sheep off this spur, where the snow was, according to our judgment, fullythreefully three [sic] feet deep on the top