Subject: Carolina Parakeet
Date: Jan 13 15:40:40 1995
From: "D. Goble" - gobled at uidaho.edu



.
The Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) was a conspicuous
presence because it was gregarious, flocking in raucous groups of
hundreds of birds and because of its bright plumage, which generally
resembled a larger version of the cage-bird currently sold in pet shops as
parakeets: it had a green body with a yellow head and neck, and a
reddish-orange forehead. Not surprisingly, early observers were
impressed by the bird's dazzling plumage:
They came screaming through the woods in the morning,
about an hour after sunrise, to drink the salt water, of
which they, as well as the pigeons, are remarkably fond.
When they alighted on the ground, it appeared at a distance
as if covered with a carpet of richest green, orange, and
yellow: they afterwards settled, in one body, on a
neighbouring tree ... covering almost every twig of it, and
the sun, shining strongly on their gay and glossy plumage,
produced a very beautiful and splendid appearance.
The parakeet, the only representative of the parrot family in the United
States, was divided into two subspecies, Conuropsis carolinensis
carolinensis -- the "true" Carolina Parakeet" -- and C.c. ludovicianus -- the
Louisiana Parakeet. The former was the more eastern, ranging from
Florida north to Virginia and occasionally into Pennsylvania and New York.
C.c. ludovicianus was found in the Mississippi-Missouri drainages from
the Gulf to the Great Lakes, from western New York to southern
Wisconsin to eastern Colorado.
.
The parakeet apparently had specific habitat requirements. It
favored heavily wooded river bottoms, trees along streams, and cypress
swamps. The pioneer American ornithologist Alexander Wilson reported
them only from scattered locations on a trip down the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers in the early nineteenth century. Similarly, the species
apparently nested communally, an adaptation that current evidence
indicates is a response to environmental constraints such as a lack of
sufficient suitable habitat. Furthermore, flocks birds wandered widely in
search of food -- seeds, fruits, nuts, and blossoms -- they apparently were
not migratory.
.
As early as 1831, Audubon noted that the species' numbers were
declining. As the century progressed, the species' range gradually shrank
from east to west toward the Mississippi River. The last reliable wild
sightings were in Florida in 1904; the last member of the species died in
captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in February, 1918.
.
The extinction of the parakeet was the result of a combination of
factors. As seed eaters, it developed a fondness for cultivated fruits and
grains that made them unpopular with farmers who relentlessly killed
them. The species was also hunted as a game bird, shot as a target,
killed for its feathers, and netted for sale as a cage bird -- despite
Audubon's report that "their screams are so disagreeable as to render
them at best very indifferent companions." Nonetheless, these actions
appear not to account fully for the parakeet's rapid disappearance. As
Bent noted, "it has always retreated before the spread of civilization and
seemed incapable of surviving in settled regions."
.
Between 1600 and 1859, Euro-Americans moved from a tenuous,
scattering of widely dispersed communities to an empire that spanned the
continent: Oregon was admitted as the thirty-third state in 1859. The
ecological changes that accompanied this expansion were dramatic and
far-reaching. Population maps show fingers of population spreading up
river valleys from the Atlantic and then down the river valleys to the
Mississippi, a pattern that was doubtless repeated locally on an
increasingly finer scale.
.
Since 85-90% of the population earned their living from agriculture
during the period, most ecological effects were associated with
agriculture -- one of the most ecologically destructive land uses. This was
particularly true during the antebellum period when farming generally
consisted of clearing land, farming the soil to exhaustion, and moving on
to begin again. Peter Kalm, a Swedish naturalist who visited America in
1749, noted the common practice of mining the soil:
They had nothing to do but to cut down the wood, put it up
into heaps, and to clear the dead leaves away. They could
immediately proceed to plowing .... This easy method of
getting a rich crop has spoiled the English ... and induced
them to adopt the same method of agriculture as the
Indians; that is, to sow uncultivated grounds, as long as
they will produce a crop without manuring, but to turn them
into pastures as soon as they can bear no more, and to take
on new spots of ground, covered since ancient time with
woods, which have been spared by the fire or the hatchet
ever since the Creation. This is likewise the reason why
agriculture and its science is so imperfect here.
These practices were the norm, occurring from the large tobacco, cotton,
and rice plantations of the South through the grain-exporting middle
colonies to the diversified, small farms of New England. But it was
particularly in the South -- the parakeet's core range -- that people and
parakeets shared a preference for similar habitats: well-watered and
timbered bottom lands and wetlands that spread along meandering
streams. Since settlers initially chose the valley floors, "leaving the less
desirable slopes and uplands to the latecomers," prime parakeet habitat
would be the first to be cleared. Similarly, the cypress swamps of the
Carolinas had been logged for rice plantations by the middle of the
eighteenth century. The volume of land cleared is noteworthy: while land
clearing was relatively modest until 1800, almost 114,000,000 acres had
been cleared by 1850; in the next decade, almost 40,000,000 more acres
were cleared for agriculture.
.
In addition to clearing land for agriculture, trees were cut to
provide fuel and lumber. Logging increased exponentially after 1840,
when lumber production became a significant factor; total cut initially
peaked shortly after 1900. In the decades following 1880, the timber
industry was particularly active in the South. Again, the trees most likely
to be removed were those in parakeet habitat since water was the
primary method of transporting logs to mills even after railroads had
begun to transport lumber to consumers.
.
European settlers also introduced a competitor: the European
honey bee (Apis mellifera). The honey bee was brought to America by
early settlers and spread rapidly. The bees nested in hollow trees, the
roosting and nesting sites of parakeets. Thus, the bees may have
prevented roosting. In addition, as one review noted, "the magnitude of
destruction of hollow trees by 'bee hunters' in search of honey and wax
is little appreciated."
.
As with the Passenger Pigeon, once the population of a species
drops below a certain level several factors can cause extinction. In the
case of the Carolina Parakeet, it is apparent that extinction resulted from
various changes in the species' environment caused by Euro-Americans.
Rapid habitat destruction through land-clearing for agriculture combined
with eradication efforts by farmers and orchardists led to a decline of the
species that was exacerbated by the cage bird trade and scientific
collecting. The extinction of a successful species like the parakeet and
the pigeon are symptomatic of far more fundamental ecological changes
than are extinction of relatively rare species such as the Great Auk. The
demise of both the Carolina Parakeet and the Passenger Pigeon at
approximately the same time demonstrates that Euro-American
colonization of the continent produced fundamental and far-reaching
effects.
.
.
Bibliography:
.
Arthur C. Bent, Life Histories of North American Cuckoos, Goatsuckers,
Hummingbirds,and Their Allies (1940)
Paul R. Ehrlich et al., The Birder's Handbook 279-81 (1988)
Joseph M. Forshaw, Parrots of the World 430-33 (2d rev. ed. 1978)
Tim Halliday, Vanishing Birds 96-100 (1978)
James C. Greenway, Jr., Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World 322-27
(2d rev. ed. 1967)
Alexander Wilson, Wilson's American Ornithology 246-53 (T.M. Brewer
ed., Boston, Otis, Broaders & Co. 1840) (photo. reprint 1970)
Amos W. Butler, Notes on the Range and Habits of the Carolina
Parrakeet, 9 Auk 49 (1892)
Edwin M. Hasbrouck, The Carolina Paroquet (Conurus Carolinensis), 8
Auk 369 (1891)
George Laycock, The Last Parakeet, Audubon, Mar. 1969, at 20, 25.
Mikko Saikku, The Extinction of the Carolina Parakeet, Envtl. Hist. Rev.,
Fall 1990, at 1


Dale Goble
University of Idaho
College of Law
Moscow, Idaho 83843

gobled at raven.csrv.uidaho.edu