The only true alpine parrot in the world, living above the bushline in New Zealand's Southern Alps
Kea (Nestor notabilis).
Nature · Birds
Kea
Endangered · c. 3,000–7,000 birds
Nestor notabilis — Strigopidae
The world's only true alpine parrot, an olive-green mountain bird of New Zealand's Southern Alps with brilliant orange under the wings. Famous for its intelligence and destructiveness, it strips rubber from car windscreens and opens rubbish bins, and has passed laboratory tests of tool use and statistical inference. A government bounty killed more than 150,000 between 1860 and 1970 for alleged sheep-killing; the species is now Endangered.
How to spot them
- ▸Olive-green with bronze feather edging, a slate-grey narrow curved upper mandible and dark legs
- ▸Vivid orange-red underwing and rump, visible only in flight
- ▸A loud, drawn-out, unmistakable 'keeaa' call given in flight over mountain valleys
- ▸Confiding, inquisitive groups around ski fields, car parks and mountain huts, pulling at rubber and bootlaces
- ▸Juveniles have bright yellow eye-rings, cere and lower mandible; adults are duller there
How to know it
Olive-green above but flashes brilliant orange-red under the wings in flight
Kea.
Notorious for stripping rubber from windscreen wipers and opening bins at ski fields
Kea — 'the clown of the mountains'.
A bounty paid from the 1860s to 1970 killed over 150,000, blamed for attacking sheep's kidney fat
Kea — the bounty was lifted only in 1970 and full protection came in 1986.
Laboratory tests in 2020 showed it can reason about probability, a skill previously shown only in great apes
Kea — statistical inference in a parrot.
Named in Maori for its own loud flight call, and in Latin as the 'noteworthy' member of its genus
Nestor notabilis, the kea.
Its lowland forest relative, the kaka, shares a genus, and both are distant cousins of a flightless nocturnal parrot
Kea — the Strigopidae, the parrot family endemic to New Zealand.
Quick-fire facts
- •Length about 48 cm, weight about 0.8–1 kg; it lives 20 years or more in the wild
- •IUCN Red List: Endangered, uplisted in 2017 after passing through Near Threatened and Vulnerable
- •Population estimates vary widely: New Zealand's Department of Conservation gives 3,000–7,000 birds; the IUCN assessment used around 4,000 mature individuals
- •The Maori name is onomatopoeic, imitating the bird's 'keeaa' call
- •It nests on the ground in burrows and rock crevices, which makes it extremely vulnerable to stoats and possums
- •Lead flashing and nails on old buildings poison keas, which chew metal; lead removal is a core conservation measure
- •The genus Nestor also contains the kaka and the extinct Norfolk Island kaka; the family Strigopidae includes the kakapo
- •It is an omnivore: roots, berries, insect larvae, carrion and, occasionally, the fat of live sheep — the behaviour that earned the bounty
- •Keas have been shown to make and use tools, to solve multi-step puzzles, and to have a 'play call' that is contagious, like laughter
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Kea Conservation Trust — Kea facts