LOUISIANA PARAKEET 13 



Both of these records might well be based on escaped cage birds, as 

 there were a number in captivity at that time, and the wild birds 

 had long since disappeared. 



Wilson (1832) suggests certain reasons why the inland parakeet 

 enjoyed a wider and more northern distribution than its relative on 

 the Atlantic coast. He writes : 



The preference, however, which this hird gives to the western countries, 

 lying in the same parallel of latitude with those eastward of the Alleghany 

 mountains, which it rarely or never visits, is worthy of remark ; and has been 

 adduced, by different writers, as a proof of the superior mildness of climate 

 in the former to that of the latter. But there are other reasons for this par- 

 tiality equally powerful, though hitherto overlooked ; namely, certain peculiar 

 features of country to which these birds are particularly and strongly attached ; 

 these are, low, rich, alluvial bottoms, along the borders of creeks, covered with 

 a gigantic growth of sycamore trees, or button-wood : deep, and almost inpene- 

 trable swamps, where the vast and tower-cypress lifts its still more majestic 

 head ; and those singular salines, or, as they are usually called, licks, so gen- 

 erally interspersed over that country, and which are regularly and eagerly 

 visited by the Paroquets. A still greater inducement is the superior abundance 

 of their favorite fruits. That food which the paroquet prefers to all others is 

 the seeds of the cockle bur, a plant rarely found in the lower parts of Penn- 

 sylvania or New York; but which unfortunately grows in too great abundance 

 along the shores of the Ohio and Mississippi. 



Nesting. — We have no more positive information on the nesting 

 habits of this parakeet than we have of the eastern race, beyond the 

 following statement by Col. N. S. Goss (1891) : "Their nests are 

 usually placed in holes or hollow cavities of trees. In the spring of 

 1858, a small flock reared their young in a large hollow limb of a 

 giant sycamore tree, on the banks of the Neosho River, near Neosho 

 Falls, Kansas. I have never been able to procure their eggs." 



Eggs. — ^Vliat few eggs of this race are in existence are indistin- 

 guishable from those of the Carolina parakeet. The measurements 

 of the only four eggs that I have been able to locate are 36 by 27, 35 

 by 27.5, 35 by 26.5, and 36 by 26.5 millimeters. 



Food. — Prof. Myron H. Swenk (1934) says of the food of this 

 parakeet : 



The food of the Interior Carolina Paroquet, though all vegetable was highly 

 varied, and they seemed to delight in the fruits of spiny or thorny plants. 

 One of the most relished foods was the seeds of the cocklebur {Xanthium 

 canadense), and they fed also on the seeds of the sand-bur grass {Cenchrus 

 triiuloides) and of the various species of thistles {Cirsinm). In the fall they 

 ate the seeds of the honey locust {Gleditsia triacanthos) and the tender buds 

 and fruit of the osage orange (Madura poniifera). In the spring they ate the 

 buds of the red maple (Acer rul)rum) and birch (Betula spp.). During the sum- 

 mer they ate much fruit, especially mulberries, wild grapes, hackberries and 

 pawpaws, and, after the planting of cultivated apple orchards, were likely to 

 visit them and peck out the apple seeds in the fall, sometimes doing injury in 



