Kea

on our recent trip to New Zealand I got to meet the famous New Zealand bird the Kea

These big parrots are quite used to people and quite playful among each other:



they appear to be a green camouflage pattern when they take off you can see clearly the red under their wings:



stories of them damaging your car are not over stated, as this fellow (who seems to be known locally to the human population) hopped straight under our car as soon as we stopped before we even got out...



The Kea are actually under threat, so despite their behaviour please be nice to them, people have been responsible for taking their numbers to the threatened level both by hunting them and by the introduction of the Australian Possum (much reviled in NZ)