#carolina parakeets

[antiqueanimals]

Elements of Zoölogy: A Text-book. Written by Sanborn Tenney. 1875.

Internet Archive

[runawaycarouselhorse]

The Carolina Parakeet is believed to have died out because of a number of different threats. To make space for more agricultural land, large areas of forest were cut down, taking away its habitat. The bird's colorful feathers (green body, yellow head, and red around the bill) were in demand as decorations in ladies' hats. The birds were also kept as pets and could be bred easily in captivity. However, little was done by owners to increase the population of tamed birds. Finally, they were killed in large numbers because farmers considered them a pest, although many farmers valued them for controlling invasive cockleburs. It has also been hypothesized that the introduced honeybee helped contribute to its extinction by taking many of the bird's nesting sites. A factor that contributed to their extinction was the unfortunate flocking behavior that led them to return immediately to a location where some of the birds had just been killed. This led to even more being shot by hunters as they gathered about the wounded and dead members of the flock. This combination of factors extirpated the species from most of its range until the early years of the 20th century. However, the last populations were not much hunted for food or feathers, nor did the farmers in rural Florida consider them a pest, as the benefit of the birds' love of cockleburs clearly outweighed the minor damage they did to the small-scale garden plots. The final extinction of the species is somewhat of a mystery, but the most likely cause seems to be that the birds succumbed to poultry disease, as suggested by the rapid disappearance of the last, small, but apparently healthy and reproducing flocks of these highly social birds. 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. The fact remains, however, that persecution significantly reduced the bird's population over many decades.

[tumbleweedstillhaspanic]

By popular demand:

[agavnythepigeon]

"Soon my love we will join the others under the museum lights, but for now, under the starlight, you are glowing"

The last Passenger Pigeon and last Carolina Parakeet on earth both died at the Cincinnati zoo in the early 1900s.

[odetoscavengers]

Something that could have been

[extinctionstories]

Tie a string around your finger, so you won't forget...

The Carolina Parakeet was declared extinct in 1939.

Up until just the year before, people were still claiming to have sighted the yellow-headed parakeets in the wild—in the impenetrable depths of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp; along the Santee River basin of South Carolina, where people still search for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker to this day—but evidence suggested only escaped, feral species of pet birds, tinged by wishful thinking.

The last definitively identified specimen of Conuropsis carolinensis, a male named Incas, had died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918. As it happens, his last home was the very same cage in which Martha, the endling Passenger Pigeon, had spent her final years. 2014, the hundredth anniversary of Martha's loss, brought the publication of a number of new books on the topic of the Passenger Pigeon and even a documentary; the centenary of Incas' death, by contrast, warranted only a handful of mentions of our lost native parrot.

Hardly a hundred years later, our parakeet has faded from common memory—like the fading text on the tags that twine around the feet of the study skins that fill museum specimen drawers, where they should have filled the sky, should have filled roosts in hollow trees, should have filled our backyards; should have filled their lungs with air, and our hearts and imaginations and eyes with the sight of their iridescent green feathers.

The title of this painting is Memory Knot. It is gouache on 18 x 13 inch paper, and is the 9th piece in my series on the extinct Carolina Parakeet. It is also the final piece in the series as originally conceived (though inspiration continues to strike, and this is not the last appearance the species will make in my art).

Please, remember that there was a bird called the Carolina Parakeet. Remember what happened to it. Remember that we are the only ones who can keep it from happening again.

[jadeseadragon]

Walton Ford (American, b. 1960), Dying Words (Carolina Parakeet), 2005.

[rgibson63]

Lost Americans wheel. Watercolor and ink.

[in-vyn-cible]

Visited the local ecology building where they store specimens and they have a whole extinct/rare bird cabinet I was so blessed to be able to view and spend time with. The closest I’ve come to a religious experience, just getting to sit in the presence of these guys was so…there’s no words. I have more photos I’ll add eventually but I hope to go back again soon.

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #WorldArtNouveauDay on #MosaicMonday:

1. Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 1848-1933)

“#Parakeets & #Goldfish Bowl” Window, c.1893

Leaded stained & opalescent glass; bronze chain

Framed (with molding): 79 3/4 x 44 x 2 1/4 in.

2. John La Farge (American, 1835-1910)

“Butterflies & Foliage” Window, 1889 Leaded stained & opalescent glass

Overall (with original wood frame): (71 1/2 x 32 3/8 x 1 3/4 in.)

Framed (w/metal outer frame): (73 x 33 1/4 x 6 1/2 in.)

On display at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

[drinkinggblood]

please, please, please forget-me-not

[ornithologyorthodoxy]

7/23/24

[alonglistofbirds]

[2094/11056] Carolina parakeet - Conuropsis carolinensis

(extinct)

Order: Psittaciformes (parrots) Superfamily: Psittacoidea (true parrots) Family: Psittacidae (holotropical parrots) Subfamily: Arinae (neotropical parrots)

Video credit: Naturalis Biodiversity Center

[cypherdecypher]

Animal of the Day!

Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)

(Photo from Naturalis Biodiversity Center)

Extinction Date- 1939

Habitat- Midwestern United States

Size (Weight/Length)- 280 g; 25 cm

Diet- Seeds; Fruits; Nuts

Cool Facts- The Carolina parakeet was once one of the three parrot species native to the United States. These brilliantly colored birds were once found from New York to the Gulf of Mexico along riverbanks and cypress swamps. Flocks had up to 300 individuals, building nests in tree hollows and eating nuts or fruits. Carolina parakeets were in decline since the last glacial maximum, and combined with inbreeding and capturing for museum specimens, the parakeets were eradicated from the wild by 1904. A pair of Carolina parakeets, Incas and Lady June, in the Cincinnati Zoo passed away in 1918. Strangely enough, they were not classified as extinct until 1939 under the hope that some parakeets remained in the mangroves of Florida. Today, the sun parakeet, or sun conure, remains their closest relative. Sun conures are endangered due to hunting for their feathers, habitat loss, and capture for the pet trade. Conservationists are rushing to protect the sun parakeet’s remaining habitat and cracking down on cross-border trade.

Rating- 11/10 (Possibly poisonous from their diet including cockleburs.)

[agavnythepigeon]

-🐦"The Last of our Kind" Passenger Pigeon and Carolina Parakeet illustration is now a silver foiled art print on my Etsy🐦-

[curiouscatalog]

From: Wilson, Alexander, and George Ord. American Ornithology : Or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States ; Illustrated with Plates, Engraved and Colored from Original Drawings Taken from Nature. Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1808. Print.

QL674 .W75 1808