Carolina Parakeet || Tales Of Forgotten

The Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) was a small green neotropical parrot with a bright yellow head, reddish orange face and pale beak native to the eastern, Midwest and plains states of the United States.
It was the only indigenous parrot within its range and had bright yellow head, reddish orange face and pale beak It was called puzzi la née ("head of yellow") by the Seminole and kelinky in Chickasaw.
It was found from southern New York and Wisconsin to Kentucky, Tennessee and the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic seaboard to as far west as eastern Colorado.
It lived in old-growth forests along rivers and in swamps. There are two recognized subspecies.
Though formerly prevalent within its range, the bird had become rare by the middle of the 19th century.
The last confirmed sighting in the wild was of the ludovicianus subspecies in 1910.
The last known specimen perished in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918 and the species was declared extinct in 1939.
They were probably poisonous—American naturalist and painter John J. Audubon noted that cats apparently died from eating them, and they are known to have eaten the toxic seeds of cockleburs.
The Carolina parakeet was a small green parrot very similar in size and coloration to the extant jenday and sun conures.
These birds were fairly long lived, at least in captivity - a pair was kept at the Cincinnati Zoo for over 35 years.
Their population estimates range from tens of thousands to a few million birds (though the densest populations occurred in Florida covering 170,000 km2, so there may have been hundreds of thousands of the birds in that state alone).
The bird lived in huge, noisy flocks of as many as 200–300 birds. It built its nest in a hollow tree, laying two to five (most accounts say two) 1.6 in (4.1 cm) round white eggs.
Details of its prevalence and decline are unverified or speculative.
Deforestation in the 18th and 19th centuries and hunting played a significant role in their extinction, both for their colorful feathers used to adorn women's hats and to reduce predation on southern crops.
Another factor that exacerbated their decline to extinction was the flocking behavior that led them to return to the vicinity of dead and dying birds (e.g., birds downed by hunting), enabling wholesale slaughter.
The bird was rarely reported outside Florida after 1860. The last reported sighting east of the Mississippi River (except Florida) was in 1878 in Kentucky.
By the turn of the century it was restricted to the swamps of central Florida and the last known wild specimen there was killed in Okeechobee County, in 1904.
Additional reports of the bird were made in Okeechobee County, Florida, until the late 1920s, but these are not supported by specimens.
The final extinction of the species in the early years of the 20th century is somewhat of a mystery, as it happened so rapidly.
Vigorous flocks with many juveniles and reproducing pairs were noted as late as 1896, and the birds were long-lived in captivity, but they had virtually disappeared by 1904. Sufficient nest sites remained intact, so deforestation was not the final cause.
About 720 skins and 16 skeletons are housed in museums around the world and analyzable DNA has been extracted.
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