Settlers killed off the only parrot species native to the United States
The last of the most colorful bird in North America died in 1918
If birds were Sandra Bullock characters, the Carolina parakeet would have been voted Miss Congeniality. She was highly social, curious, and empathetic, her feathers glossy green and bright yellow. A red tuft circled her beak. And oh, was she talkative.
At least, that’s what scientists have been able to piece together. The parrot didn’t last long once English settlers began clearing American land for agriculture, and few bothered to study a species once so robust it was considered a pest. What they do know is the Carolina parakeet was the only parrot endemic to the United States, and it had one of the most northerly ranges of any parrot species on earth. It was likely the most colorful bird in North America.
Then suddenly it was gone. The last recorded parakeet died in 1918, in the same cage where the last passenger pigeon died four years earlier.
The Carolina parakeet burrowed in tree cavities of old growth forests and along rivers between southern New York to the Gulf of Mexico. The bird measured about 12 inches long and weighed roughly 10 ounces. Its strong, sharp beak cracked seeds and feasted on grains and fruits. The parakeet even ate cocklebur flowers, which contain a toxic glucoside, and are presumed to be the only animal to do so.
Unfortunately, their hearty appetites were a big part of their downfall. In the 17th and 18th centuries, European settlers massively deforested the Southeast, including millions of acres of sycamore and cypress trees where the birds lived, to make room for agriculture. Parakeets that managed to survive eventually raided the new fruit trees and crops.
Their reputation as “annoyances” stuck and people began gunning down flocks for sport, and sometimes for their meat. When a human shot a Carolina parakeet, other birds would flock around their wounded, screeching comrade. Their communal behavior and loud calls, which could be heard up to two miles away, made them even easier prey.
When they weren’t killed for food or fun, ladies paid top dollar for colorful parrot plumes to put in their hats. Other Northerners kept the parakeets as pets.
“The loss of this spectacular species, perhaps the most brilliant of all our original wildlife species, remains, and will presumably always remain, a profound aesthetic, biological, and social tragedy,” wrote Noel Snyder in his 2004 book, The Carolina Parakeet: Glimpses of a Vanished Bird. “That no real effort to preserve the parakeet was ever made represents a perpetual reminder of the dark side of our own species’ history.”
Instead, settlers introduced an invasive species of European honeybee that likely took over many of the parakeets’ remaining tree cavities. Ruthless.
By the late 1800s, Carolina parakeet populations had drastically declined. Despite the previous centuries’ deforestation and indiscriminate hunting, scientists can only guess at the final straw. They hypothesize that, being forced to live among people and livestock, the parrots succumbed to poultry disease — though, again, it appears few considered the parakeets’ die-off significant enough to document.
“If this is true, the very fact that the Carolina Parakeet was finally tolerated to roam in the vicinity of human settlements proved its undoing,” wrote the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove.
The last known Carolina parakeet, named Incas, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on February 21, 1918. A report in the Cincinnati Times-Star the following day read:
“A student of bird-life, acting as coroner in the case of ‘Incas,’ the Carolina parrakeet [sic], said to be the last of its race, might enter a verdict of ‘died of old age.’ But…the bird died of grief…Late last summer, ‘Lady Jane,’ the mate of Incas for 32 years, passed away, and after that the ancient survivor was a listless and mournful figure, indeed.”
Incas's girlfriend had died, so he died. That was the obituary summation for the extinction of an entire species.
Not only that. Since the Carolina parakeet was the only species to occupy its genus, Conuropsis, the genus was also entirely extirpated.
“The species was hammered relentlessly and mercilessly from all sides,” according to Parrots of the Wild: A Natural History of the World’s Most Captivating Birds.
Later, birds appearing to be Carolina parakeets were sighted in 1935 along the Perdido River in Alabama. But no ornithologist confirmed the encounter. Some experts believe a few of the wild parrots may have survived into the 1940s or 1950s in Florida. Or they might have been feral parakeet imports.
Either way, today, America’s founding parrot is gone.
