Kea Parrot of New Zealand

Kea Parrot

If you go skiing in New Zealand you probably will come across the Kea Parrot in the high-altitudes of the mountain range.  They are also known as the “mountain parrots” or the “nestor parrots”.

Their eyes have a yellow ring around them, their crown is a yellowish-green and their bill is a solid brown and their legs and feet are dark gray. Their breast is bronze/greenish, the underside of their tail is green and blue with orange and yellow tips. The males and the females have basically the same coloring; which is a dull olive green, their feathers are edged with a dark brown. You really can’t see all his beautiful color unless he is flying.

Kea's Flying

Keas are omnivorous, and in the wild they eat roots, flowers, seeds, leaves, fruits, berries, worms, insects and larvae. They also eat carcasses of other animals and are eager to eating garbage left behind by humans. In captivity, they eat a seed mixture, pellets, and some people even feed them dog kibble (hope it is a good quality kibble) and as with most parrots they eat fresh vegetables and fruit, eggs and worms, if you don’t like to feed worms you can offer them ground meat. The Kea parrots are very intelligent and very nosy, they will take anything then can get away with, so hold on to your hats. They have even been know to cause damage to tires on vehicles.

The males will fight for dominance and the only the dominant male will breed, they reach their sexually mature at 4 years old, and the females reach sexual maturity at 3 years old. The male will breed with numerous females and the breeding couples last throughout their life time. The normal breeding period is from July to January.

Both male and female will build the nest, under rocks amid tree roots or in hollow logs. The nest usually has a footpath and can be anywhere from 3 to 18 feet long and that leads to a nesting chamber. They will line the chamber with leaves, moss, twigs and woodchips. The female lays between 2 to 4 eggs and she will incubate them close to 4 weeks. During this time the male will usually feed her but on occasion she will leave the nest to feed and the male will guard the nest.

Both parents care for the hatchlings with the female feeding those more than the male but he helps out by playing and teaching how to fly and keeping an eye on them when they leave the nest which is usually around two weeks after birth. It takes about 10 weeks before they are fully fledged and after that they go out on their own. Brothers and sisters live together until they reach maturity, then the males will leave to structure their own flocks.

A sad fact is the New Zealand government paid a bounty for Kea bills because the bird preyed upon livestock. Thousands were killed before the bounty was lifted in 1970 when the Kea received partial protection after a census counted only 5000 birds. They were not fully protected until 1986.

More articles on parrots.

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