PSITTACID^ THE PAKROTS, ETC. 



397 



pure gamboge -yellow. Edge of wing tinged with orange. Bill creamy white; eylMs 

 whitish; iris blackish brown; feet whitish. Young. Similar, but no yellow on head or 

 neck, which are green, the forehead only, or forehead and lores, dull orange-red. 

 Wing, 7.20-7.60; tail, 6.40-7.10. 



The avian-fauna of Illinois has lost no finer or more interesting 

 member than the present species, which is probably now every- 

 where extinct within our borders, though fifty years ago it was of 

 more or less common occurrence throughout the State. The Na- 

 tional Museum possesses a fine adult example from Illinois (Cat. 

 No. 12272), another from Michigan, and several from the Platte 

 Eiver, in Nebraska; now, however, it appears to be quite extermi- 

 nated except in isolated and rapidly contracting areas in Florida, 

 and thence westward to the lower Mississippi Valley. Its present 

 northern limit in the interior is uncertain, but so far as known is 

 the eastern part of the Indian Territory and portions of Arkansas. 

 In the opinion of the best judges, twenty-five years hence the 

 species will exist only in museums and in literature. 



An outline of its former distribution is thus given by Dr. Brewer, 

 in History of North American Birds, Vol. II., p. 580 : 



"In descending the Ohio in the month of February, Wilson met 

 the first flock of Parakeets at the mouth of the Little Scioto. He 

 was informed by an old inhabitant of Marietta that they were 

 sometimes, though rarely, seen there. He afterwards observed 

 flocks of them at the mouth of the Great and Little Miami, and 

 in the neighborhood of the numerous creeks which discharge them- 

 selves into the Ohio. At Big Bone Lick, near the mouth of the 

 Kentucky Eiver, he met them in great numbers. They came 

 screaming through the woods, about an hour after sunrise, to drink 

 the salt water, of which, he says, they are remarkably fond. 



"Audubon, writing in 1842, speaks of the Parakeets as then very 

 rapidly decreasing in number. In some regions, where twenty-five 

 years before they had been very plentiful, at that time scarcely 

 any were to be seen. At one period, he adds, they could be pro- 

 cured as far up the tributary waters of the Ohio as the Great 

 Kanawha, the Scioto, the head of the Miami, the mouth of the 

 Maurnee at its junction with Lake Erie, and sometimes as far 

 northeast as Lake Ontario. At the time of his writing very few 

 were to be found higher than Cincinnati, and he estimated that 

 along the Mississippi there were not half the number that had ex- 

 isted there fifteen years before." 



