The Carolina and Western Parakeet, two of the most colorful and pervasive native birds that early Colonists encountered in America went the way of the Passenger Pigeon--Off the face of the Planet by the turn of the 20th Century due to being easy to kill because of its "horde roosting" behavior............for its colorful feathers..................and for its need to plunder farmers crops after their forested habitat was cleared by the plow...................Going, going, gone these vast swarms of birds were by the turn of the 20th Century

 The existence of brilliantly colored parakeets flying in large flocks in eastern North America was an unexpected surprise for European colonists settling the country.  They had thought such birds lived only in tropical regions.  Yet these parakeets obviously had adapted to winter snows and frigid nights.  The species was named the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) and had a long, graceful tail and a bright yellow and orange head.  Its green wings were tinged with yellow, set off by its overall forest green plumage.  Eastern parakeets belonged to the subspecies Conuropsis carolinensis carolinensis and ranged from Florida to southern Virginia, while western parakeets, Conuropsis carolinensis ludovicianus, 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 (Forshaw 1989).  These birds flew in enormous flocks and may have numbered in the millions prior to European settlement.
       Like conures (Aratinga genus), native to the Caribbean and Latin America, Carolina parakeets could give away their presence by loud and raucous calling.  Because they fed on many types of wild seeds and fruits 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. (Cokinos 2000).  Early travelers in Kansas described the appearance of screaming bands of these parakeets during swirling winter snowstorms; flocks settled in groves of cottonwood and walnut trees, delighting travelers with their vocalizing and dazzling colors (McKinley 1985).  Large, hollow trees were among their favorite roosting spots, and flocks of birds would cling to the inside of the trees with their beaks and feet (Forshaw 1989).  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.  When they saw a fruit or seeding tree, the flock would spiral down until they almost reached the ground, and then rise up to alight on the branches.  In the afternoons, they sheltered in groves of trees, often near streams where they drank and bathed (Forshaw 1989).
       These parakeets may have been most abundant in the South and the major river valleys of the Midwest.  Early naturalists described them perched in huge Bald Cypress trees, their bright plumage contrasting with the pale green, feathery foliage.  They would hover and flutter on the tops of these cypresses, extracting the seeds (McKinley 1985).  Travelers in the southern hardwood forests and swamps, as well as in pine woods, found them very numerous.  In Florida's St. John's River area, where mid-19th century observers saw large flocks, many were killed by plantation owners for food (McKinley 1985).  
     In Audubon's painting of Carolina Parakeets, these extremely sociable birds are clustered in a tree, feeding on Cockleburs (Cenchrus tribuloides), their favorite food (Blaugrund and Stebbins 1993).  Only recently have the true colors of this bird, as depicted by Audubon, been revealed by a publication of his original watercolors, which shows their plumage in shades of vivid green, yellow and reddish orange.  In the lithographs of previous editions, these colors were drab and dull (Blaugrund and Stebbins 1993).
 
     As their forests were cut and prairies plowed for farms, the parakeets turned to raiding crops and orchards.  Flocks would converge on farms at times of harvest, alighting on stacks of grain sheaves.  So dense were the perching and feeding birds that they made the stacks look as if "brilliantly colored carpets had been thrown on them," according to Audubon (Forshaw 1989).  For these raids on farms, they received "severe retaliations" from farmers; Carolina parakeets were easily approached and never learned to fly away from humans.  Farmers would shoot entire flocks, killing 10 or 20 at each discharge (Forshaw 1989).  When one was shot, the others refused to leave their wounded or dead flock mate.  Audubon described these massacres:  "The living birds, as if conscious of the death of their companions, sweep over their bodies, screaming as loud as ever, but still return to the stack to be shot at, until so few remain alive, that the farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more on ammunition" (Poattie 1940).   
     Like many members of the parrot family, Carolina parakeets attempted to aid others of their kind who were stricken or threatened by predators.  This behavior contributed to their survival in natural conditions, and only the devastating killing power of guns hastened their extinction.  Audubon described procuring a basketful of the parakeets with a few shots in 1831 in order to choose good specimens for drawing the figures for his watercolors of North American birds (Fuller 1987).  Thousands more of these parakeets were captured for the pet trade and killed for museum collections.  At least 675 of the eastern race alone are found in museums. In 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 the bird, the higher the price paid, further endangering the species.  Many birds were killed for specimens by collectors who failed to note the location and date of the killing (McKinley 1985).  Molting adults and juvenile birds were thrown out, and the physical appearance of the latter birds remains unrecorded (McKinley 1985).  One 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 (McKinley 1985).  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 (McKinley 1985).  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" (McKinley 1985).
          In spite of the keen interest in the species by scientists, naturalists and members of the public, few observations were made of the behavior of these parakeets while they were still common.  Almost nothing is known of their life history, flock movements, breeding seasons, nesting, feeding or ecology (McKinley 1985).  It is known, however, that they were long-lived, based on the survival of the last captive specimens, which were at least 32 years old.  Although a few bred in captivity, they often abandoned their eggs, and no captive-bred birds survived (Forshaw 1989).  In spite of large numbers captured for sale as cage birds, no serious effort was made to perpetuate the species through captive breeding, which might have prevented their extinction.
       As early as 1831, Audubon noticed a decline: "Our parakeets are very rapidly diminishing in number; and in some districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen" (Forshaw 1989).   Flocks of several hundred had commonly been seen when the country was first settled.  Within about 90 years, by the 1880s, they had declined both in range and number, with only small flocks or pairs remaining (Forshaw 1989).  Persecution by farmers was a major cause — and perhaps the most important factor — in the decline of the Carolina parakeet in the view of parrot ornithologist, Joseph Forshaw (1989).  The last flocks sought refuge in the forests and remote swamps of Florida, where collectors and trappers pursued them (Forshaw 1989).  Other factors played important roles as well.  Thousands were killed for sport or for their feathers to decorate ladies' hats.  Their nesting and roosting trees were cut by settlers and loggers, and their food plants were plowed under by farmers (Cokinos 2000).  European honeybees, armed with stingers and introduced by colonists, also may have driven them from their hollow trees as they rapidly spread throughout the country, seeking hive sites (Cokinos 2000).  These hollow tree-roosting sites may have been crucial to their survival in cold weather; the birds crowded together side-by-side for warmth.  The giant hollow cypresses and sycamores, oaks and other hardwoods in the old-growth forests of the eastern United States, crucial habitat to so many species of wildlife, were among the first trees cut in bottomland swamps and forests.
       A few Carolina parakeets survived into the first years of the 20th century, with sightings reported in the Panhandle and the Kissimmee Prairie of north-central Florida (McKinley 1985).  The last wild specimen was taken in either 1901 or 1904; the date is still in dispute (Cokinos 2000).  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, but the National Audubon Society later dismissed the account (Forshaw 1989).  In any case, the area was later destroyed for construction of a power project (Forshaw 1989).  No confirmed sightings were made after about 1920, although a black-and-white home movie made in 1937 showed some parakeets in the Okefenokee Swamp of southeastern Georgia that may have been of this species (McKinley 1985).  Had the Carolina parakeet been accorded legal protection and reserves set aside during the 19th century, this spectacular species would almost certainly still be alive.         
     A pair of Carolina parakeets kept at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens –the same zoo that housed Martha, the last passenger pigeon – was the last known members of their species.  Sixteen of these parakeets were purchased by this zoo in the 1880s for $2.50 per bird (Fuller 1987).  Over the years, the birds laid eggs, but none hatched or were even incubated, and gradually they died off until only a pair was left — cage-mates for 32 years (Fuller 1987).  In the late summer of 1917, the female, Lady Jane, died.  Incas, the male, became listless after her death, and in February 1918, he died of grief, the keepers claimed (Fuller 1987).