Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace quotes a similar misstatement in his book entitled “Darwinism;” for, after describing the methods of the Kea’s attack, he says:—“Since then it is stated that the bird actually burrows into the living sheep, eating its way down to the kidney, which forms its special delicacy.”
These incorrect statements were made possible by the loose way in which some of our writers have collected their evidence, and, in some cases, have made use of mere sheep station rumours.
It was Mr. C. C. Huddlestone who first disputed the statement, and said that the Kea attacked sheep for the kidney fat and the flesh.
This idea of Mr. Huddlestone’s is supported by the evidence sent to me by men who have seen many sheep killed and wounded by the Kea, for they all (with one exception) state that the kidney is not the special attraction, but that the meat and fat are the object of the bird’s desire.
The witness who was the one exception, in another part of his letter, writes as follows:—“I have shot many Keas by dead sheep, and they vomit fat;” so there seems to be evidence, even in this exception, that the bird ate the fat rather than the kidneys.
Of course, the Kea’s taste may have changed since its first attempt at sheep-killing; yet many witnesses, ranging back to some of the earliest, do not support the kidney theory. A shepherd, in a letter to me, says:—“I have not examined many sheep that have been killed by Keas, but in the ones that I have investigated I have always found the same result,—the fat eaten and the kidneys left. Of course, the kidneys have been found mauled, but they were not sufficiently torn to give the impression that the Keas had been eating them.”
Another correspondent says:—“I was walking quietly along and came to the edge of a slight depression in the ground, and there, right at my feet, a Kea rose from the body of a sheep. I examined the sheep. It was a fat merino wether,—perfectly sound; but it had been severely injured
