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Carolina Parakeet

A species of Conuropsis, Also known as Carolina Conure
Scientific name : Conuropsis carolinensis Genus : Conuropsis

Carolina Parakeet, A species of Conuropsis
Also known as:
Carolina Conure
Botanical name: Conuropsis carolinensis
Genus: Conuropsis
Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) Photo By James St. John , used under CC-BY-2.0 /Cropped and compressed from original

Description

The Carolina parakeet was a small green parrot very similar in size and coloration to the extant jenday parakeet and sun conure. The majority of the plumage was green with lighter green underparts, a bright yellow head and orange forehead and face extending to behind the eyes and upper cheeks (lores). The shoulders were yellow, continuing down the outer edge of the wings. The primary feathers were mostly green, but with yellow edges on the outer primaries. Thighs were green towards the top and yellow towards the feet. Male and female adults were identical in plumage, however males were slightly larger than females (sexually dimorphic). The legs and feet were light brown. They share the zygodactyl feet of the parrot family. The skin around the eyes was white and the beak was pale flesh colored. These birds weigh about 3.5 oz., are 13 in. long, and have wingspans of 21–23 in. Young Carolina parakeets differed slightly in coloration from adults. The face and entire body was green, with paler underparts. They lacked yellow or orange plumage on the face, wings, and thighs. Hatchlings were covered in mouse-gray down, until about 39–40 days when green wings and tails appear. Fledglings had full adult plumage at around 1 year of age. ("Nature Serve, Conuropsis carolinensis", 2005; Fuller, 2001; Mauler, 2001; Rising, 2004; Snyder and Russell, 2002) These birds were fairly long lived, at least in captivity - a pair was kept at the Cincinnati Zoo for over 35 years.
Feeding Habits
The bird lived in huge, noisy flocks of as many as 200–300 birds. It built its nest in a hollow tree, laying two to five (most accounts say two) 1.6 in (4.1 cm) round white eggs. It mostly ate the seeds of forest trees and shrubs including those of cypress, hackberry, beech, sycamore, elm, pine, maple, oak, and other plants such as thistles and sandspurs (Cenchrus species). It also ate fruits, including apples, grapes and figs (often from orchards by the time of its decline). It was especially noted for its predilection for cockleburs (Xanthium strumarium), a plant which contains a toxic glucoside, and it was considered to be an agricultural pest of grain crops.

General Info

Distribution Area

The Carolina parakeet had the northernmost range of any known parrot. It was found from southern New England and New York and Wisconsin to Kentucky, Tennessee and the Gulf of Mexico. It has also had a wide distribution west of the Mississippi River, as far west as eastern Colorado. Its range was described by early explorers thus: the 43rd parallel as the northern limit, the 26th as the most southern, the 73rd and 106th meridians as the eastern and western boundaries respectively, the range included all or portions of at least 28 states. Its habitats were old-growth wetland forests along rivers and in swamps especially in the Mississippi-Missouri drainage basin with large hollow trees including cypress and sycamore to use as roosting and nesting sites. Only very rough estimates of the birds' former prevalence can be made: with an estimated range of 20,000 to 2.5 million km, and population density of 0.5 to 2.0 parrots per km, population estimates range from tens of thousands to a few million birds (though the densest populations occurred in Florida covering 170,000 km, so there may have been hundreds of thousands of the birds in that state alone). The species may have appeared as a very rare vagrant in places as far north as Southern Ontario. A few bones, including a pygostyle found at the Calvert Site in Southern Ontario, came from the Carolina parakeet. The possibility remains open that this specimen was taken to Southern Ontario for ceremonial purposes.

Species Status

The last captive Carolina parakeet, Incas, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on February 21, 1918, in the same cage as Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who died in 1914. There are no scientific studies or surveys of this bird by American naturalists; most information about it is from anecdotal accounts and museum specimens. Therefore, details of its prevalence and decline are unverified or speculative. There are extensive accounts of the pre-colonial and early colonial prevalence of this bird. The existence of flocks of gregarious, very colorful and raucous parrots could hardly have gone unnoted by European explorers, as parrots were virtually unknown in seafaring European nations in the 16th and 17th centuries. Later accounts in the latter half of the 19th century onward noted the birds' sparseness and absence. The birds' range collapsed from east to west with settlement and clearing of the eastern and southern deciduous forests. John J. Audubon commented as early as 1832 on the decline of the birds. The bird was rarely reported outside Florida after 1860. The last reported sighting east of the Mississippi River (except Florida) was in 1878 in Kentucky. By the turn of the century it was restricted to the swamps of central Florida. The last known wild specimen was killed in Okeechobee County, Florida, in 1904, and the last captive bird died at the Cincinnati Zoo on February 21, 1918. This was the male specimen, called "Incas", who died within a year of his mate, "Lady Jane". Additional reports of the bird were made in Okeechobee County, Florida, until the late 1920s, but these are not supported by specimens. It was not until 1939, however, that the American Ornithologists' Union declared that the Carolina parakeet had become extinct. The IUCN has listed the species as extinct since 1920. In 1937, three parakeets resembling this species were sighted and filmed in the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia. However, the American Ornithologists' Union analyzed the film and concluded that they had probably filmed feral parakeets. A year later, in 1938, a flock of parakeets was apparently sighted by a group of experienced ornithologists in the swamps of the Santee River basin in South Carolina. However, this sighting was doubted by most other ornithologists. The birds were never seen again after this sighting, and shortly after a portion of the area was destroyed to make way for power lines, making the species' continued existence unlikely. About 720 skins and 16 skeletons are housed in museums around the world and analyzable DNA has been extracted from them.
Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) Photo By James St. John , used under CC-BY-2.0 /Cropped and compressed from original

Scientific Classification

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