Not a kakapo

Kea image from

Sir, -- The photograph captioned "A kakapo" in Adrian A. Barnett's review of Catherine A. Toft and Timothy F. Wright's Parrots of the Wild (June 10) [not the claimed accurate one above - JB] is in fact not of that huge, uniquely flightless, nocturnal species, but of another distinctive New Zealand parrot, the kea. As well as its habit of attacking the wing mirrors of cars, alluded to by Barnett, this bold and entertaining mischief-maker has other ways of irritating humans, as I found out on a recent trip to their homeland. I was just about to enjoy a second forkful of meat pie at an outdoor café in the Southern Alps, when a kea swooped down and snatched it. Unusually for parrots, keas are partly carnivorous, and rogue individuals fly onto sheep's backs and dig beneath the skin with their meat-hook-shaped bills to obtain fat -- a habit that cost them dear when shooting, until protection in 1970, reduced numbers by about 98 per cent.

--Jonathan Elphick, Starcross, Devon, Letters to the Editor (The Times Literary Supplement, June 17, 2016), p. 6