The Carolina Parakeet (_Conuropsis carolinensis_), 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 subspecies, 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 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. Alexander Wilson wrote:
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.
Timothy Flint, another early observer remarked, "We have seen no bird of
the size, with plumage so brilliant. They impart a singular magnificence
to the forest prospect, as they are seen darting through the foliage, and
among the white branches of the sycamore."

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. The species also
apparently nested communally, an adaptation that current evidence
indicates is a response to environmental constraints such as a lack of
sufficient suitable habitat. Furthermore, although 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 appears to have been the result of a
combination of factors. As seed eaters, the species developed a
fondness for cultivated fruits and grains that made it unpopular with
farmers who relentlessly killed them. The species was also hunted as a
game bird (a dozen were reported to "make a most delicious sea-pie"),
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."

The species behavior contributed to its rapid demise. For example,
the slaughter was assisted by the species' habit of returning "to hover
and scream over the dead" so that a single hunter could often destroy an
entire flock. Similarly, the species' communal nesting habits made them
easy prey for netters who would simply place a bag over the hole to the
communal roost and capture the entire flock.

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. As with
many other things, as a species becomes ever rarer demand from
collectors increase and extinction hastened. While Frank Chapman
berated "so-called sportsmen" for "wantonly slaughter[ing]" the species,
his report of the last sighting was from "northeast of Lake Okeechobee,
where, in April, 1904, I saw thirteen and shot four."

In the case of the Carolina Parakeet, it appears 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 environmental effects.


This brief natural history is based on:

Arthur C. Bent, Life Histories of North American Cuckoos, Goatsuckers,
Hummingbirds,and Their Allies (photo. reprint 1964) (1940)
Jerram L. Brown, Helping and Communal Breeding in Birds 70-75 (1987)
Jerram L. Brown, Avian Communal Breeding Systems, Ann. Rev. Ecology
& Systematics 9:123 (1978)
Amos W. Butler, Notes on the Range and Habits of the Carolina
Parrakeet, Auk 9:49 (1892)
Stephen T. Emlen & Sandra L. Vehrencamp, Cooperative Breeding
Strategies among Birds, in Perspectives in Ornithology 93 (Alan H.
Brush & George A. Clark, Jr. eds., 1983)
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)
James C. Greenway, Jr., Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World 322-27
(2d rev. ed. 1967)
Tim Halliday, Vanishing Birds 96-100 (1978)
Edwin M. Hasbrouck, The Carolina Paroquet (Conurus Carolinensis), Auk
8:369 (1891)
George Laycock, The Last Parakeet, Audubon, Mar. 1969, at 20
Mikko Saikku, The Extinction of the Carolina Parakeet, Envtl. Hist. Rev.,
Fall 1990, at 1
Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography
(1989)
Alexander Wilson, Wilson's American Ornithology 246-53 (T.M. Brewer
ed., Boston, Otis, Broaders & Co. 1840) (photo. reprint 1970)
Albert Hazen Wright, Early Records of the Carolina Paroquet, Auk 29:343
(1912)