Treasure of the Month: the Kea, New Zealand’s inquisitive alpine parrot

This animal is not the first of its kind known to science, nor was it collected by someone famous. This Kea is unique because it was actually a resident of Berlin, a long way from its native New Zealand. So this seems to be  a bird out of place in the world, both because of its locality, and because of its notoriously “cheeky” behavior. Jonathan Meiburg is the author of A Most Remarkable Creature, a recent book that features another group of curious scavenging birds called caracaras. Caracaras belong to the falcon family, which are parrots’ nearest relatives—and Keas have much in common with them. “Caracaras and Keas both see the world a bit like we do—a place of intriguing puzzles, hidden resources, and a tangle of causes and effects—and they’re strongly attracted to things they haven’t seen before,” Meiburg says. Unlike most animals you would encounter in Europe, keas and caracaras seek out interactions with human made devices, and are intensely focused on solving puzzles presented to them. In the Nature program “Tiere vor der Kamera”, keas are referred to as “New Zealand’s joker bird”. When given the opportunity, these generalists and opportunists even act as predators.

The interaction between Keas and humans has not always worked out well for these clever creatures. In the early 20th century farmers in New Zealand became afraid that the keas were killing their sheep, and this began a long period of persecution for the Kea in which approximately 150,000 were killed. Since becoming endangered, Keas remain primarily in the high forests of the southern island of New Zealand. Like much of the other native birdlife in New Zealand, they are vulnerable to invasive mammal species like stoats.

The Kea has a scalloped dark green pattern on its feathers, and in contrast a bright orange under its wings, and a long bill. Keas are omnivorous, and use their bill to dig, tear, and pull at roots and stones while looking for food. Like the caracaras, the Kea represents a lineage of birds living in the remnants of what was millions of years ago a vast temperate rainforest stretching across Antarctic to New Zealand, Australia, and Cape Horn. As Meiburg remarks, “When you look at their plumage, their distinctive olive green color, what you’re looking at is the color of the Antarctic forest”.

So how did an alpine parrot from the Southern hemisphere end up living in Berlin? And then made its way to the zoological museum? The Kea in Hamburg was donated to the museum by the Berlin Zoo in 1974. A colony of Keas still lives at the zoo, and some of these birds may very well be the grandchildren of the Kea in Hamburg.

© LIB, Friedman

Many specimens acquired by museums in the last few decades are “salvage”; they are recovered from situations where birds die naturally or in an accident such as collision with a window. The Hamburg Museum of Nature receives salvage specimens from wildlife rehabilitation centers, nature centers, and private citizens who have found a dead bird.

Dr. Nicholas Friedman is the curator of ornithology at the Museum of Nature Hamburg. “Birds have so many characteristics that make them charismatic: they fly, they sing and dance, and they interact with the world in some relatably intelligent ways.” At the Hamburg Museum of Nature, scientists like Dr. Friedman use modern techniques like genomics, micro-CT and spectroscopy to compare species from different branches of the tree of life. “There’s so much we can learn from them, so many stories they have to tell” he says, “about the evolution of their behavior, about their history, and hopefully about how we can protect them”.

The bird collection at the Museum of Nature has over 70,000 specimens, representing birds from every continent and roughly one quarter of all known bird species.