Читать книгу Extreme Nature - Mark Carwardine - Страница 20

NAME	kea Nestor notabilis
LOCATION	New Zealand
ABILITY	curiosity

© Tui De Roy/Minden Pictures/FLPA

Parrots are highly inquisitive, but even among parrots, keas are exceptional. They’re native to New Zealand’s South Island, a cold, snowy, unparrotlike place where keas have to use all their wits to find a meal. While parrots elsewhere are flying from one conspicuous fruit to another, keas are searching under rocks and bark and in bushes, cones and shells for food such as roots, shoots, berries or insect larvae. This and a mountainous habitat virtually free of predators has, over 2.5 million years of evolution, made them insatiably curious. And they’re especially drawn to things they’ve never seen before. So when humans arrived in New Zealand, the keas were delivered a bonanza of new objects to investigate for food.

Nowadays great sources of fascination are camping grounds and ski-resorts. These parrots are large and have powerful beaks, and they can rip right through a canvas tent for the sheer joy of investigation. A particular favourite is the rubber on cars – windscreen wipers mainly. One gang of keas is said to have ripped out the rubber lining around the windscreen of a tourists’ hire car, causing the glass to fall inwards and opening up the interior. When the tourists returned, they found clothes, food and car parts scattered in the snow, while the keas appeared to be playing a game of football with an empty Coke can. The birds then retreated and watched – with great curiosity, it seemed – to see what the tourists would do about it.