Another _hostis humani generis_, against which every man’s hand or gun may be turned at any season, is the kea. A wild parrot, known to science as _Nestor notabilis_, the kea nevertheless shows how fierce and hawk-like a parrot can become. His sharp, curving beak, and dark-green plumage, brightened by patches of red under the wings, are parrot-like enough. But see him in his home among the High Alps of the South Island, and he resembles anything rather than the grey African domestic who talks in cages. Nor does he suggest the white cockatoos that may be watched passing in flights above rivers and forest glades in the Australian bush. Unlike his cousin the kaka, who is a forest bird, the kea nests on steep rocky faces or lofty cliffs, between two and five thousand feet above sea-level. If he descends thence to visit the trees of the mountain valleys, it is usually in search of food; though Thomas Potts, the naturalist, says that keas will fly from the western flanks of the Alps to the bluffs on the sea-coast and rest there. One envies them that flight, for it must give them in mid-air an unequalled bird’s-eye view of some of the noblest scenery in the island. Before the coming of the settlers these bold mountaineers supported a harmless life on honey, seeds, insects, and such apologies for fruits as our sub-alpine forests afford. But as sheep spread into the higher pastures of the backbone ranges, the kea discovered the attractions of flesh, and especially of mutton fat. Beginning, probably, by picking up scraps of meat in the station slaughter-yards, he learned to prey on dead sheep, and, finally, to attack living animals. His favourite titbit being kidney fat, he perches on the unhappy sheep and thrusts his merciless beak through the wool into their backs. Strangely enough, it seems to take more than one assault of the kind to kill a sheep; but though forty years have passed since the kea began to practise his trick, the victims do not yet seem to have learned to roll over on their backs and thereby rid themselves of their persecutors. Even the light active sheep of the mountains are, it would seem, more stupid than birds of prey. Ingenious persons have suggested that the kea was led to peck at the sheep’s fleecy backs through their likeness to those odd grey masses of mossy vegetation, called “vegetable sheep,” which dot so many New Zealand mountain slopes, and which birds investigate in search of insects. [Illustration: THE REES VALLEY AND RICHARDSON RANGE]