Carolina parakeet

A mounted specimen in the Field Museum in Chicago, IL (USA).

The Carolina parakeet (*Conuropsis carolinensis*) is a species of North American neotropical parrot that went extinct on February 21, 1918.

## Description

Carolina parakeets were sexually dimorphic in size, with males being slightly larger than females, but both sexes were identical in plumage. They had primarily green feathers, light brown legs and feet, and yellow and orange heads. The skin around the eyes was white and their beaks were colored pale-tan. Newly-hatched chicks had light-grey down and grew to have entirely green feathers until they reached adulthood at one year of age, when they gained their yellow and orange colors. John Audubon believed that Carolina parakeets were poisonous, as their diet consisted of toxic *Xanthium* seeds and cats were known to have died after eating the birds.

## Paleobiology

### Reproduction

Carolina parakeets reached sexual maturity at one year of age, and bred once a year around March or April. They layed clutches of 2-5 eggs, and the eggs took around 23 days to hatch. Many people believed that Carolina parakeets were monogamous and mated for life, but no studies had been conducted on the mating systems of these birds while they were extant. Many birds shared nests, suggesting the existence of a larger family unit.

### Behavior

Carolina parakeets traveled in flocks ranging from 100 to 1,000 individual birds, nested with as many as 30 birds in a single nest. They were highly social, and when one member of their family unit was shot, they often flew around the body, which left them vulnerable. Farmers often used this to their advantage and killed entire flocks to protect their crops. They engaged in social grooming and preening, and roosted during the day. They ate primarily during the early morning and sunset. They cried loudly while flying, but kept silent while roosting. When predators were spotted, they made shrill warning calls to alert members of their flock, and they were attracted to the cries of injured family members.

### Diet

Carolina parakeets primarily ate Xanthium seeds, which are toxic to other animals; John Audubon believed that this diet gave them poison. They also ate the seeds and unripe fruits of other plants, and were recorded to have ruined many crops. A flock was capable of ruining an entire fruit tree's crop in minutes, which made many fruit farmers shoot them on sight.

### Predation

The main predator of Carolina parakeets were humans, who hunted them as pests, for food, to stuff, to sell their feathers, or to capture as pets. It is also likely that they were hunted by birds of prey such as Cooper's hawks as well as domestic and feral cats, although it is possible that adults were avoided by predators due to their poison. Their eggs were likely a food source to egg-stealing animals such as raccoons, skunks, squirrels, and snakes.

### Extinction

The decline and extinction of the Carolina parakeet were not studied when the bird was extant, making the details of its path to extinction largely speculative. European accounts from the 16th and 17th centuries made note of the loud flocks of colorful parrots, but accounts from the latter half of the 19th century and onward noted their sparseness and absence. The birds' range began to collapse as deforestation expanded from east to west, and John Audubon commented on the decline of their population in 1832. After 1860, they were rare outside of Florida, and the last wild specimen was killed in 1904 in Okeechobee County, Florida. On February 21, 1918, the last captive individual died. This individual was a male named Incas, and he died within a year of his female mate, named Lady Jane. In 1920 the IUCN officially listed the species as extinct, and the American Ornithologists' Union listed them as extinct in 1939.

### Sightings

After the death of the final wild specimen, sightings were reported in Okeechobee County, Florida until the 1920s, but there was no evidence to back up these sightings. In 1937, three parrots resembling Carolina parakeets were filmed in the Okefenokee Swamp in the state of Georgia, but the American Ornithologists' Union reviewed the footage and concluded that they were just feral individuals of an extant parakeet species. One year later, in 1938, a group of ornithologists claimed to have seen a flock in the swamps of the Santee River in South Carolina, but this claim was dismissed by other scientists. The area where the flock was allegedly seen was soon destroyed to make way for power lines, making the continued existence of the species unlikely.

## References

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina\_parakeet
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conuropsis\_carolinensis\_(Carolina\_parakeet).jpg
* https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Conuropsis\_carolinensis/
* https://eol.org/pages/45510851