Happy Little Mayor

Wang Bo drove to the ranch. Peterson handed him a telescope and said, "Look straight ahead, there is a flock of birds, which is kea."

"Obviously called a sheep-pecking parrot, why do you all use kea?"

"Because that's how they are called, and we call them by their names more smoothly."

Looking out of the telescope, Wang Bo first saw a herd of Romney sheep.

The wool color of these Romney sheep is white and looks very clean. It is very different from those dirty sheep raised in other pastures and looks pleasing to the eye.

However, the condition of some sheep is very bad. The blood on their backs is dripping, and the white looks are dyed red. The sheep are walking around anxiously, and the injured ones still make painful howls. .

Wang Bo moved the telescope, and a big bird suddenly came out from behind a sheep, so it suddenly appeared in his field of vision and startled him.

This bird is half a meter long and is a large bird. Its feathers are olive green with black piping; the top and neck feathers are yellow-green with dark radial stripes.

Its belly and abdomen are light brown-green, its lower back is orange-red, its mouth is slender and curved to gray-brown, its eyes are dark brown, and its looks are overbearing.

After appearing, the bird flapped its wings and landed on the back of the Romney sheep. The two claws caught on the back of the sheep just like the iron hook, and it became red!

This is the sheep-pecking parrot, and its movement explains its name.

"Did you see that? This is the annoying kea. They often attack the flock, jump on the sheep's back, shred the sheep's skin, and pecking the lamb, they will always make the meek sheep panic." Peterson said.

After this sheep-pecking parrot attacked the Romney sheep, it opened its thick and long beak and screamed a few times, but Wang Bo couldn't hear it a long way away. He didn't know if it really sounded like "kea".

A few more pecking parrots appeared later. These parrots were chasing the flock. Instead of chasing after flying, they jumped with their feet. The action seemed funny and they chased after them like a clown.

The action is funny, but the temperament is not funny. These guys catch up with the sheep and go up with a mouth or grab it with their claws. They have great strength and can tear the sheepskin in a few clicks.

Romney sheep have a very gentle temperament. When they are bullied onto their heads, they don't know how to resist, they just hide.

The tigerless monkey in the mountain is called the king. The pecking parrot thinks that he is very powerful, and the four-legged beast that is dozens of times larger than him chased and chased. They are called arrogant.

Watching his precious sheep be bullied like this, Pharaoh's nose smoked.

But cuteness is righteousness. Although this bird is very overbearing, its appearance is really beautiful, and the turquoise feathers are relatively rare among other birds.

So, Pharaoh was a little hesitant, and said, "What do these birds usually do? Kill them? Get rid of them?"

Peterson said: "It's not easy to handle. First of all, we can't get rid of them. There is a lack of food in winter. We have so many sheep here, and they must be happy to stay."

"If you want to kill them, it's not good. They belong to vulnerable species. New Zealand has a foundation to protect them. People also like kea. Many New Zealanders will plant their favorite plants at home to attract them. They visit in their own garden. "

The pecking parrots are good because their persecution of the flock was once considered a harmful bird and suffered a serious culling, especially the farm ranchers, which made great efforts in the process of culling the parrots.

Peterson told Wang Bo that humans had eliminated at least 150,000 pecking parrots. Later, wildlife experts gradually realized that doing so might disrupt the ecological balance of the region.

By 1986, New Zealand had introduced laws to protect pecking parrots, and at that time there were only 3,000 such birds in the country.

This law does not stipulate that it is an offence to cull the pecking parrot. It does not allow commercial hunting and recreational hunting. If the pecking parrot damages the life of the shepherd, it can also be killed at this time.

In Wang Bo's case, killing a sheep-pecking parrot is not illegal.

However, it was very painful. This time, a large group of sheep-pecking parrots came to the sunset ranch. Peterson took the old king to walk around the ranch and saw at least hundreds of parrots large and small.

Hundreds of pecking parrots were hunted and killed, not to mention whether Wang Bo could go wrong in their hearts, just to say that this situation was exposed, that the trouble from the pecking parrot protection association was enough to annoy him.

This kind of parrot is not only hunting and killing sheep. In fact, they are not so sturdy and can kill sheep, but they will eat meat and fat from sheep and hurt them.

More often, sheep-pecking parrots feed on leaves, fruits, berries, grass roots, vegetation, nectar, insects, worms, dead animals, garbage in camps, and various foods given by humans.

Every spring, they will dig up various types of plants in the mountains, and search for new plants or small insects that can grow around the snowdrifts and between the rocks.

In summer, they look for fruit or berries, seeds and flowers among the dwarf trees or bushes in the mountains.

In the fall, most of them will stay in the beech forest area, looking for some meshes, leaves and nuts.

However, in the harshest time of winter, their food has dropped sharply. Except for some parrots living in tourist areas, which are fed by tourists to feed, most of them will look for the remains of dead animals and dig out the internal organs and fat for food.

It is in winter that they like to attack sheep the most. They have something to eat in spring, summer, and autumn. They rarely do so. In the final analysis, the behavior of attacking sheep is the only way they can find food in this season.

Peterson is an old cowboy. He has extensive farming experience. He also has good ideas on how to deal with these parrots:

"Boss, do you know that these parrots are not invincible, they have natural enemies, and to drive them away, they must rely on their natural enemies."

"There are a lot of opossums in our ranch. This is one of the enemies of pecking parrots. They can't harm adult birds, but they can harm young birds. Even opossums like to steal the eggs of parrots."

"Kea is a very intelligent bird. When they find that their offspring are in a dangerous situation, they will leave here actively."

Wang Bo looked at him and said, "So all we have to do is train possums? Don't you think there are too many possums in our pasture?"

"No, we should cultivate ferrets. This kind of animal is the one who likes to hunt Kea baby birds the most."

Wang Bo thought about it and shook his head: "No, I have a better idea."

(To be continued.)