Fun With Parrots

 

Hi everyone.  At our last motel for the trip I ended up not able to connect to their wi-fi.  Most frustrating!  Now, however, my companion and I are sitting in Christchurch airport and taking advantage of their free unlimited wi-fi.

We are now on our way home.  I wanted to post this last night:

The world’s only mountain-dwelling parrot is the Kea (Nestor notabilis), and it loves to live in Fiordland.

I have heard of folk who drive in and out of Milford Sound and never see even one kea, and I have heard of folk who have returned from a walk and found their car destroyed (keas love to peck at the rubber seals around the windows etc).

When we drove past four birds sitting on a road working metal pile, we thought ourselves rather honoured – that was until we stopped at Monkey Creek.

Here we met the world’s best Parrot People Poser!  This large tagged bird paraded around in the carpark obviously enjoying all the attention and thankfully not looking for food (people are asked not to feed them).

The kea then decided it wanted to sit on a post to pose some more, only there was a stone that had been placed there.  

With his long beak he deftly pushed the stone off and sat there turning this way and that as everyone present clicked away with their cameras.

These birds are highly intelligent and I like to think he was actually watching us more than we were watching him!

That Monkey Creek kea had been an incredible experience, but more fun was to come.

We stopped at the Gertrude Valley to take a photo, and a different kea came to visit us.  This one sat upon the roof of the car but thankfully the claws don’t reach the ground when they stand or else we would have had one very scratched car to return to the rental company!

But that still wasn’t the end of the keas.

As we waited at the Homer Tunnel for the traffic lights to turn green, two kea came visiting each vehicle – obviously looking for that illicit treat of some food.  No food in our car so they flew on to the next one.

We stopped below the tunnel to view the waterfalls and another kea decided to land on the car.  This was a younger untagged bird who had obviously not learnt to obey the ‘rules’ yet and decided he wanted a meal of rubber.

As he tried to pick at the rubber around the rooftop, I endeavoured to shoo him away.  However, I think he thought I wanted to feed him my camera and so, as I have heard of them flying off with people’s cameras before, I prudently retreated.  We hurriedly drove off so that he could fly away.

Strangely, on our return journey we never saw any kea at all.  They can often be viewed in aviaries around the country, but this was my first experience of them in the wild. 

It is a memory I will always treasure 😊

Margaret.