Tuesday & Wednesday

December 29 and 30, 2015

I fell asleep midday on Tuesday and woke up just before there was a forceful knock at the door. I was alarmed at who might be banging on the door but I was happy to see Nick standing on the porch.

He said he reckoned I had just come down here to nap but I spent the morning up at Death’s Corner hanging out with about eight kea.

The star of the group is a female banded juvenile I call 4. (This is the number on her leg bands) She challenged another male juvenile and chased him and some other adults away whenever there was something she wanted.

I returned to DC in the evening and she was there again.

This morning when I went out to DC to observe she was there again. She seems to be related to an adult male banded with a C tag. He preened her briefly and then she preened him too and opened her beak so he would feed her. He made a regurgitating gesture although I couldn’t see if there was any crop milk. She hopped around C in circles like an excited child and followed him around the parking lot.

While I was seated at one location she flew up and into my back briefly. I don’t know if she was testing me out as a perch or just having some target practice but she tried again a bit later.

There was an adult male with an 8 band on his leg and he kept me company. 

From time to time I would put out small bits of almond to bring the birds close to me for study and photography but mostly I followed them around and sat down nearby to watch them.

 8 would touch my knee gently with his beak to get my attention. He adopted a relaxed posture where he sat down on the back of his legs and watched me for a bit. He also took the edge of my notebook and pen in his beak.

The people that come to DC are usually delighted by the kea but one woman who arrived in a Jaguar with her husband stayed there with the windows rolled up and lost her temper when a kea landed on the hood of her car. 

She got out of the car with a shirt and said they were awful birds that were shitting everywhere. I think she reacted this way because she was terrified of the kea and it was a glimpse at the down side of how tourists and visitors can react around them. 

Yesterday a saw a girl throw a book out the window of her vehicle at a kea that had landed nearby and I almost said something to her. 

Another man warned me when a kea was on the roof of my car and said to someone else that the birds would “get your fingers.”

I’ve been nipped and pinched by kea many times before at Willowbank. As a child, I received more painful pinches from my mother’s fingernails when she thought I was being naughty in church. 

The fact that Keas have a powerful multi tool in their beaks and that only a few of them pinch in earnest has cured my fear of bites. Every species has its grumps. Kea are no different.

What amazes me is the extent to which they learn about the world through their mouths. The beak and tongue tell them about the flavor, textures, durability and the function of objects. They learn first through manipulating objects with their beaks. 

While adults remain curious about new objects in their environment their reactions are positively sober in comparison with the juveniles. To the latter, the world is one big novelty shop. Everything must be pulled, tossed, pried and nipped. 

There are the natural objects of twigs, berries, grasses and rocks and then there are the strange man made things like zippers, Velcro, rubber and plastic. 

A youngster discovers eye drops.

Kea parents and adults indulge juvenile antics because this is how the young learn to survive.

I think the flock I have been seeing at DC is part of some sort of extended family group.

I’ve been going out to DC in the morning around 10 am and staying for about an hour and a half. 

I return in the evenings at around 7 p.m.

Today I went on a small hike down the Bealey Track.

 There were some amazing alpine plants. 

There were two species of sundew growing close to each other and several varieties of daisy. 

I saw one tomtit and it proved nearly impossible to photograph.

This afternoon I picked some lupins for the house and I found what I’m guessing is a deer skull while I was wading through them. I’m thinking of taking it home for Audrey to use as a model for some of her drawings. I may paint it.

I had a slice of carrot cake at the Otira pub and feed some apple to the mama kune kune there. She was constantly pestered by her three portly piglets and finally she just had to lay on her side and let them nurse.

After that I got another apple from the house and took it out into the back paddock where the Clydesdales are. I went under the wire fence and found three of the boys grazing in a group. There is a forth who was off doing his own thing. I’m not normally nervous around horses but these are big animals and I was cautious around them. I fed the apple to the closest horse and another came to investigate. I let them both sniff my hands to see I didn’t have any more fruit and they went back to grazing. 

If I had to describe their attitude towards me and I would say it was passing indifference. I walked home after that made myself a cup of tea and worked on my jigsaw puzzle.

It’s 12:15 am at the moment and I think that will do it for me today.