THE CAROLINA PAROQUET. 369 
No. 161. 
CAROLINA PAROQUET. 
A. O. U. No. 382. Conurus carolinensis (Linn.). 
Synonyms.—CaroLINA PARRAKEET; PARAKEET; PARROQUET,. 
Description.—Adult: Head and neck all around bright yellow; forehead, 
lores and cheeks orange-red ; remaining plumage bright green, most of the feathers 
with blackish shafts, variegated with faint bluish and yellow-green on wings; the 
bend of the wing orange, the edge yellow; the inner webs of wing-quills fuscous ; 
tail regularly graduated, dull yellowish green below; bill white; feet flesh color. 
Young: Plain green. Length 12.00-13.50 (304.8-342.9); wing 7.00-7.60 
(177.8-193.) ; tail 5.25-7.00 (133.3-177.8) ; bill .qo (22.9). 
Recognition Marks.—Little Hawk size; bright green, with orange and yel- 
low head. 
Nesting.—Not known to have bred in Ohio, but probably did so. Nest, for- 
merly described as in hollow trees, but now believed to nest in loose colonies, each 
nest being placed near the end of a horizontal branch in a cypress or other tree; a 
loose bunch of sticks, something like a Mourning Dove’s. Eggs, 2-5, white. Av. 
size 1.40 X I.10 (35.6 x 27.9). 
General Range.—Formerly Florida and the Gulf States north to Maryland, 
the Great Lakes, lowa and Nebraska, west to Colorado, the Indian Territory and 
Texas, and straggling north-eastward to Pennsylvania and New York. Now 
restricted to Florida, Arkansas and Indian Territory, where it is only of local 
occurrence. 
Range in Ohio.—Formerly common, but now extinct. 
MANY causes have conspired to bring about the total extermination 
within our bounds of this once abundant bird, but the chief cause was ‘‘Der 
Fluch der Schonheit’’ (the curse of beauty). It was not possible that in 
an age of guns and women a creature of such prominence and beauty should 
have been spared to grace our landscape with its living green. Brilliant 
plumage and a dashing figure were alone sufficient to doom their possessor 
to destruction — and worse, namely millinery appropriation — but when to 
these were added a strident voice and a fondness for fruits and young 
grains, the case became quite hopeless. 
There are gray-haired men still among us who remember the shrieking 
companies of “parrots” which used to haunt the bottom lands and go charging 
about the sycamores like gusts of mad leaves; but to-day only the cunning 
plume-hunter or thrice-lucky ornithologist may penetrate to the remaining 
fastnesses of the species in the everglades of Florida. 
The flight of the Parrakeets was described as being graceful and very 
swift, comparable in both respects to that of the Passenger Pigeon. The 
birds moved about in companies of from fifty to five hundred individuals; and 
when making extended flights or when coming down to feed, the flock fell into 
a V-shaped figure, somewhat like that affected by the Canada Geese. Altho 
