A meddling kea swiped a camera during a family park outing and surprised them with some impressive footage of the wilderness.
Published Feb. 4, 2022 2:55 PM EST | Updated Feb. 4, 2022 3:13 PM EST
He’s being called the kleptomaniac parrot. But he just might win for best short film.
The mischievous kea, a large mountain-dwelling parrot, took his own little, impromptu travelogue to new heights when he flew off with a New Zealand family’s GoPro.
The thievery turned up quite a bounty of beautiful footage of the bird taking flight and soaring through the wilderness sky.
Last month, the Verheul family, of Dunedin, had been hiking in the country’s Fiordland National Park and had just returned to their lodge, setting down the GoPro that they had taken along to record their trip. Minutes later, the kea snatched the camera from the balcony and off it went.
The startled mother, Alex Verheul, and her son, Luca, can be seen running after the bird on the deck.
Little did the family know that the GoPro was filming some remarkable footage during the stealth getaway -- showing the bird taking flight and reaching higher and higher altitude, before perching on a large rock near the family’s hut. Luca ran off the deck after the bird and seconds later found the GoPro in a bit mangled condition, but no kea.
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Speaking to TVNZ, Alex Verheul said the family found the camera by following the kea’s loud calls.
“We just followed the sound down there. We could see them hanging out in a tree – they’d obviously heard us coming and abandoned the GoPro … My son decided to go check the rocks where it looked like a good place for a bird to land, and there it was still sitting there, still filming.”
Verheul said she was shocked the incident was all captured on film and fellow trampers at the hut were all intrigued to see the footage.
"I assumed we would never see it again and was grumpy that we had lost all our footage of the day," she told AccuWeather on Friday.
The shots were all the more crisp due to the clear summer day, with a high temperature of 81 F at the park.
As of Friday, the video has garnered more than 270,000 views on YouTube.
New Zealand’s Department of Conservation says the endangered kea, known for its olive-green and teal wings, is one of the most intelligent birds on the planet. Fiordland Park officials affectionately dub them the "clever clowns of the Alps" because of their bold nature. They will easily approach people and cars.
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