#keas

Feathursday Keas

The Kea (Nestor notabilis) is a large South Island, New Zealand parrot in the Strigopidae family, which also includes the Kākā and our favorite flightless bird, the Kākāpō. Keas are omnivorous, and because some Kea individuals were thought to prey on sheep, they were bounty-hunted in the 20th century, reducing their population from hundreds of thousands to between 3000 and 7000. Today Keas are classified as endangered.

This wood engraving of "Nestor-parrots" is by Karl Jahrmargt (b. 1842) from an illustration by the noted German wildlife artist Gustav Mützel (1839-1893), as published in Animate Creation by the English natural history popularizer J. G. Wood (1827-1889), published in New York in three volumes by Selmar Hess in 1885.

Our copy of Animate Creation is a revised edition, adapted to American zoology by the American physician and zoologist Joseph B. Holder, of an earlier British publication by Wood first published in London by George Routledge as The Illustrated Natural History in 1853.

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