Category: Outdoors

It was a beautiful little bird; brilliant green, with a yellow head, and a line of red around the face, the wings were edged in orange; in flight, a jewel, in flocks, a mandala, Carolina parakeets provided fleeting, noisy spectacles in the virgin rain forest that blanketed the frontier  South.  Audubon kept one as a pet; Wilson found them in Natchez in 1811, but records are spotty. Chances are they were never that numerous. Their diet of green fruit doomed them, and they were easily exterminated  by settlers establishing orchards; when one bird fell to a gun, others descended around it. Inevitably, gunfire resumed, and they were slaughtered without pity.

Carolina parakeets died out in the early 20^th century. 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 bird, Incas, died within a year of his mate, Lady Jane. In a case of what has been termed tragic irony, Incas died in the same aviary enclosure where the last passenger pigeon, Martha, died four years earlier.

By 1939, the Carolina parakeet had been declared extinct by most authorities. Some believed a few may have been smuggled out of the country and repopulated elsewhere, but that’s the same wishful thinking that buoys up news of ivory-bills.