THE KEA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 2919, 15 September 1908, Page 4

THE KEA.

In a lecture at Christchurch on New Zealand birds Mr E. Stead said that the kea was generally known as a bird most difficult to keep in captivity, though very harJy and inured to all sorts of climatic hardships. Kept in a very limited space, the bird was unusually well fed, but his life never lasted long. In time it degenerated into waiting for the next appetite and the next feed, but by-and-by tho bird either pined away, stepped eating and died, or, more usually, Over-ate himself, and fius achieved a happier end. When he himself hail obtained some keas he thought that perhaps the birds usially died from she.r boredom, and that was, he believed, actually the ease. They are extremely inquisitive and intelligent, and so he gave them a lot of toys—empty tins, little bells to ring, drain pipes to ran into or to chew; in fact, all the amusements that the back-coun-try could have afforded, with & few refinements of civilisation in addition. The result was that he now had at home some young keas, the only one 3 ever bred in captivity.