SomeDudeArt

THE CAROLINA PARAKEET

BY S-D-P

The Carolina parakeet was perhaps the most unexpected surprise for the colonists of any bird.

The common perception of parrots was of a tropical bird. Yet these parakeets obviously had adapted to winter snows and frigid nights.

The Carolina parakeets were the only parakeets found in North America, and the northernmost of all parrots.

A glossy, bright forest green bird with a yellow head and orange face, it was described as a beautiful bird, among the most brilliantly-colored of

America

’s birds.

Hatchlings for the first month of their lives were covered in mouse-gray down, until 39-40 days, when green wings and tails appear.

Juveniles were generally all-green, with lighter under-parts. Juveniles lacked yellow edges to wings and thighs.

Some juveniles would have a trifle of orange on their foreheads in Autumn, marking the gradual transformation to full plumage.

They had full adult plumage at around one-two years of age.

Adult males and females were largely identical in plumage; males were slightly larger than females.

And according to Audubon, the male bird’s feathers were brighter and more brilliant.

Two subspecies existed: Eastern parakeets ranged from Florida to southern Virginia, while Western parakeets had a wide distribution from the Mississippi-Missouri River drainage south to Texas, east to Mississippi and north to western New York State and the Great Lakes region.

The subspecies had differences; Western parakeets were more subdued in color than Eastern parakeets, and had a bluish tint.

Loud, raucous calls gave away Flocks typically numbering between 5-200 birds.

They had multiple calls; A sharp, rolling K-r-r-r, a loud Qui, and a deafening shriek have all been described.

These calls were particularly noticeable in flight. Flocks of these birds are said to have been heard miles away, according to people who experienced them in nature.

Their preferred habitat were hardwood, bottomland wetland forests, cypress swamps and woodlands around streams and rivers, as well as canebrake areas, which overlapped with swamps, rivers, streams and wetlands..

The western subspecies also lived in more Midwestern habitats.

They were fruit, nut and seed eaters, eating everything from passionfruit to wild persimmons, plums and nuts. It also consumed mulberries, paw-paw, wild grapes and leaf buds, but the cocklebur was by far its favorite.

They were also very dependent on salt, and were often seen in natural salt deposits such as at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky.

Because they fed on various kinds of wild seeds and fruits, such as hickory, passionfruit, persimmon, crabapple, cypress and possibly chestnut, and were able to endure freezing temperatures, they were among the few species in the parrot family able to survive in harsh climates, with the ability to tolerate temperatures as low as -25 F.

There are reports of screaming flocks of parakeets during harsh, blizzard-like conditions, indicating how adapted they were to the harsh winters.

Hollow large trees played a very important role in their winter survival. The birds would crowd and huddle together side-by-side for warmth inside these trees during cold winter spells and snowstorms.

It is likely Gulf Coast and Florida populations didn’t have the need to do this, due to year-round heat.

Outside of the winter, these hollow trees were their favorite roosting and sometimes nesting locations. In early morning, the birds would climb to the top branches of their roosting trees, to the

accompaniment of much chattering, and then fly off to feed for several hours.

Their feeding behavior made for quite a natural spectacle. When they saw a fruit or seeding tree, or if they were searching for food, the flock would fly over a wide area spiraling down until they almost reached the ground, and then rise up to alight on the branches. As Audubon puts it, “When they get to a place with a rich food supply, they do not immediately land like many other bird species, but first get an overview of the surroundings by flying over them in wide circles - first above the tree top heights, then slowly lower and lower until they almost touching the ground [in flight], then suddenly rising again and landing in the tree that bears the fruit they are looking for…. They usually land unusually close to each other. I saw branches covered with them as densely as possible.”

Later on, flocks eating grain stacks were likened to “brilliant carpets” by Audubon, who would later paint the most iconic portrait of these birds.

More specifically, the “spiral” flight would be done to check for predators, such as hawks.

They were known to physically defend their own from predators. If a hawk injured a parakeet, the

flock would mob the predator, driving the hawk away from their injured, shrieking flockmate.

to the injured parakeet.

They would also try to assist the fallen bird, tending

In the afternoons, they sheltered in groves of trees, often near streams where they drank and bathed.

Their highest populations were in the South, particularly Florida.

An estimated hundreds of thousands may have lived in that state alone.

Parakeets there were often seen perched in big cypress trees, contrasting with the feathery foliage with brilliant colors.

They would hover and flutter on the tops of these cypresses, extracting the seeds.

They were also numerous in pine forests, along with the southern swamps and hardwood forests.

In Florida's St. John's River area, large flocks were hunted for food by plantation owners.

The birds reportedly nested in multiple methods.

One method involved nesting in hollow trees in large groups, with 2-5 eggs.

The egg color was greenish-white to pure white, according to R. L. Long and Chester A. Reed.

Another method involved building crude nests on horizontal cypress branches, and nesting in large colonies. Several colonies contained at least a thousand birds each. They would nest in small cypress trees, their favorite position on a fork near the end of a slender horizontal branch. Every fork would be occupied, and forty to fifty nests could be counted on the same tree, according to Long.

These nests resembled that of the mourning doves, composed of cypress twigs put together loosely enough that the eggs were often visible from the ground.

The twigs of cypress trees were preferred by the parakeets. The height the nests were placed varied between 5 or 6 feet to 20 or 30 feet.

The maximum amount of eggs in these nests was, according to Long, four to five.

Long would also describe catching young birds to give to his friends as pets.

This nesting behavior was likely more common in Florida and the South, though both nesting patterns may have overlapped.

Populations in northerly areas of their range are described as nesting at the bottom of cavities in trees, in holes in trees and with females depositing eggs together.

These “parrot trees, ” as they came to be called, would be their place to sleep as well.

And as mentioned before, it was possibly crucial to winter survival.

The Western subspecies may have been partially migratory, though they weren’t known to leave the continent. The Eastern subspecies was less migratory, and long travel in search of food wasn’t as common. In Florida, birds lived year-round.

The birds were also known to suffer parasites and infections.

The heads were often particularly infected, and shortly after death these insects and parasites shifted from the skin to the surface of the feathers.

In addition, the adult Carolina parakeet was one of the few birds to be poisonous to eat.

The cause of this was due to their favorite food, the cocklebur.

Cockleburs are toxic to many animals, including cats, livestock and humans. For the parakeet, it was harmless.

The parakeet’s flesh would carry the toxin, however, reportedly making them poisonous.

For cats at least, the toxin was potent. Cats would die very quickly after eating the flesh.

This was known as early as the 17^th Century, when Mark Catesby bluntly wrote “Their guts are a poison to cats.”

Audubon also wrote of cats dying from their flesh.

Young parakeets were not apparently toxic, however.

As such, they were commonly eaten. “Parakeet pie” was a Southern dish in the 19^th Century.

Whether these were juveniles or somehow detoxified adults wasn’t always reported, but Audubon noted that juvenile or young birds were not poisonous.

Audubon himself found the flesh to be “tolerable food.”

And now we get down to their relationship with humans, and ultimately their multiple-factored extinction.

These birds had may names for them in multiple tribes living in the parakeet’s range.

It was named puzzi la née ("head of yellow") or pot pot chee by the Seminole and kelinky in Chickasaw.

In the Eastatoee valley of South Carolina, there was a tribe by the same name.

As the name Eastatoee was a local word for the Parakeet, the tribe would have been named after the bird.

This same tribe featured in an old legend behind the name of Jocassee Gorges, later Joccassee Lake.

The Eastatoee valley would come to be the last place in South Carolina where the parakeet was recorded in the wild.

In another county, Eastatoee Falls was also named after the bird, as with another record in that area of a tribe with the name, though it may be the same tribe.

Since the early years of colonization, colonists frequently captured these birds and kept them as pets.

They often taught the parakeet to mimic human speech, to varying degrees.

Some reported success, and others, such as Audubon, did not. One that succeeded reported that the parakeet could be tamed within 2 days.

In addition, they were sometimes hunted for food, like other birds. In later years Parakeet Pie was a tradition, a delicacy in southern states.

This would coincide with an expanding pet trade that would capture so many birds, the wild population would decrease.

And then, there were the farmers.

Many farmers saw these parakeets as a pest, as they would sometimes raid orchards and grain stacks.

They would start to shoot and kill parakeets in retaliation.

Since parakeets tended to tend to and defend their own, this led to easy pickings.

While that behavior may have helped them from hawks, it allowed humans to shoot as many as possible before the ammo was gone.

Entire flocks could be killed off right then and there.

Poachers and hunters for the feather trade would adopt this practice as well. Binge-shooting caused quite a decline.

Feather hunters would grow especially prominent in the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries, working for Millenaries and factories that would take dead birds or their parts and feathers and use them in women’s hats and fashion.

During the last decades of the 19th Century, Amateur collectors of specimen birds and their eggs proliferated around the Country, and Dealers in specimens earned large sums from the sale of rare birds. The rarer a bird was, the higher the price, thus the “specimen trade” killed many birds.

Many birds were killed for collections and specimens by collectors who failed to note the location and date of the killing. Molting adults and juvenile birds were often thrown out, though Audubon, Reed and other authors described and left records of the juveniles and moulting adults’ appearance.

German taxidermist August Koch visited the home of a friend in Florida in 1887 and shot some of these parakeets in the back yard of his host as they fed on mulberries. A tree that appeared to be sporting "yellow flowers with red centers," turned out to be a flock of parakeets roosting in the early evening, and he shot two birds for his collection. Another hunter was led by a Seminole Indian to a "parakeet tree," a large, hollow cypress tree near Lake Okeechobee in Florida, where he shot "as many specimens as my ammunition would allow."

The pet trade and that specimen trade would capture or kill thousands of parakeets.

At least 675 of the Eastern subspecies alone are found in museums, as of 2005.

Due to all these factors, the parakeet population had started to decline since the 1830’s. Audubon states so himself in 1832, decades before the extinction.

But by 1896 vigorous flocks were still recorded? So what caused the final, no-turning-back decline that killed off the species?

There is no single factor. And according to some, it’s somewhat of a mystery. There were several speculated factors, and some known factors. Now we go and delve into those.

Enter the European honeybee. Armed with stingers and numbers, these bees may have competed with and sometimes drove parakeets out of the prime hollow trees that parakeets often relied on for winter survival, nightly rest, nesting and/or roosting.

This theory was made by a biologist, according to Pacific Standard.

Another blow was, according to Noel F. Snyder, avian diseases, brought by poultry.

No historical records existed of parrots being afflicted by any poultry diseases at the time, however.

Around this time at least some farmers may have finally started to tolerate the parakeet, as the parakeet was keeping the cocklebur in check, keeping livestock from eating cockleburs and being poisoned. but the species still declined.

The species was reportedly rarely reported after 1860.

In 1878, the last confirmed reported sighting east of the Mississippi river, outside of Florida, was reportedly made in Kentucky.

A somewhat conflicting account of this is from Chester Reed, from the early 1900’s-1910’s.

According to his book, they were still abundant in the South Atlantic and Gulf States as late as 1885.

This would contradict that 1878 “last confirmed sighting” mentioned earlier.

By 1905, the species had declined so much that, according to Chester Reed, it was found only in interior Florida, through the Gulf Coast and especially Oklahoma.

And even then, the species would only be found in swamps and thickets, rare in any location, according to Reed.

A few sightings were reported in the Panhandle and the Kissimmee Prairie of north-central Florida during this time.

As sufficient nests were still intact, deforestation has been ruled out for the final decline, but it was a factor in the previous decline, after heavy logging in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

The dates of the final confirmed wild bird are contradicting.

According to some, the last wild bird was killed in Florida in 1904 or 1901.

According to others, in 1910 or 1912 the Western subspecies, also known as the Louisiana parakeet, was reportedly last observed.

Around the 1900’s, the pet trade and feather trade were still going strong, further causing a decline, though the feather trade would be weakened at the end of the decade by a conservation movement and President Roosevelt..

At the same time, captive birds and the pet trade finally came with a benefit: The ability to photograph the birds closely, with the resolution of the time period.

At least two photos of a living Carolina parakeet survive; both are captives, one of which was owned by Paul Bartsch, sitting on a Mr. Bryan.

The other was a photo from around 1900 of a parakeet on cocklebur branches, taken by Robert Wilson Shufeldt.

In addition, a population was introduced into Europe at one point. The now-controversial Ornithologist Hans Freiherr von Berlepsch kept the species there from 1874.

In 1929 he reports on the end of it: “One day - it was just on the last Christmas break - only a few were visible, and the next day everyone was gone. Investigations were unsuccessful. It was only a few decades later that the sad riddle was solved. In a village inn, 50 km away, I found a number of smoky remains of Karolinas parakeets, and the landlord reported that Father blessedly shot these strange birds from the linden tree within two days. He still remembers his story that the others who fell first were fluttering around again and again and could have been destroyed to the last. So here too the song about the end of this rare bird. "

Ultimately the bird was apparently hunted out there as well.

Dr. Bartsch’s beloved pet Carolina parakeet from earlier, Doodles, who was recognized at the time as one of the last living representatives of his species, died in 1914

Zoos and private collections bred the bird, and some zoos really tried to save the species.

However, captive birds would sometimes simply toss the eggs out, according to some accounts.

One of these accounts is also an account of the pair in Cincinnati Zoo, the last known captive birds of the species, and reportedly the last known pair of the species known to exist.

Sixteen of these parakeets were purchased by this zoo back in the 1880s for $2.50 per bird. Over the years, the birds laid eggs, but none hatched or were even incubated, and gradually they had died off until only a pair was left Š cage-mates for 32 years.

In the late summer of 1917 the female, Lady Jane, died. The mate, Incas, according to zookeepers, entered a state of depression after losing his mate. The following year, on April 21^st, 1918, Incas died after three decades in captivity, and several months without his mate.

According to keepers, he had died of grief.

He had died in the same cage that Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in four years and 9 months earlier.

And this was the last undisputedly confirmed Carolina parakeet to die.

It is possible the species survived into the 1920’s.

In the locality of Gum Slough, Charles Doe, an egg collector, and many residents of the area attest to nests, eggs, and adult birds.

While no adult specimen was acquired, there is corroborative evidence in support of their validity.

Until the late 1920’s, sightings were made in the Okeechobee County, Florida, though no specimens were acquired, and thus the sightings were deemed unconfirmed.

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 flock of 13 of these birds was seen near Lake Okeechobee, Florida in 1920, and two eminent ornithologists, Alexander Sprunt and Robert Porter Allen, went in search of the last members of the species in 1936. They reported seeing a flock along the Santee River in South Carolina, apparently in 1938, but the National Audubon Society later dismissed the account. The birds were never seen again after this sighting, and in any case, a portion of the area was later destroyed for construction of a power project, making the species' continued existence in the area unlikely.

About 720 skins and 16 skeletons are housed in museums around the world^[23] and analyzable DNA has been extracted from them.

In 1939 the species was declared extinct.

In 2009 a claim was made that the species was “rediscovered” in the northeastern Honduras as an isolated population that migrated into the area before. The claim turned out to be a hoax.

In recent years talks of cloning have been made about the species.

There have also been talks of CRISPR methods to bring them back, or breeding the species’s living relatives to look more like it.

Another idea has been to let the Monk Parakeet, a parakeet not that closely related but inhabiting much of the same range, to take over its vacant ecological niche.

A genome of the Carolina parakeet has been sequenced, further leaving open the possibility to clone or CRISPR them back into the world.

A test model indicates the parakeet would expand beyond its historic range.

And in 2017, the historic range map was changed from its longstanding roughly-a-century-old map to a new one, reflecting the division in the populations and the density of populations in the Southern States.

The Carolina parakeet remains one of the most fascinating, and tragic extinct animals in recent history.

Well, this took an awful while to complete!