Carolina Parakeet 469 



sionally with blue in the wings and red on head or breast. The thirty or more 

 species are widely spread from Mexico through Central America and the West 

 Indies to South America as far as Bolivia and Paraguay. Without going exten- 

 sively into their delimitation, it may be stated that in general they are sociable 

 birds, going about in noisy flocks and being tame and unsuspicious when un- 

 molested, but soon acquiring a distrust of man under persecution. Thus Rich- 

 mond, in writing of Finsch's Conure (C.finschi) of Central America, says: " It 

 feeds usually in large trees standing in the plantations, but at times in small trees 

 bordering the forest, where one day I found a flock of about twenty-five scattered 

 about in low trees that were loaded with berries. The birds were tame and 

 allowed one to approach them very closely." 



Carolina Parakeet. Very closely related, and indeed included with the 

 Conures by the American ornithologists, is the monotypic Carolina Parakeet 

 (Conuropsis carolinensis\ the only Parrot really indigenous in North America 

 north of Mexico. This is a handsome little species about twelve and a half 

 inches in length, with the head and neck all around yellow, the forehead, cheeks, 

 bend of the wing and tibia orange, and the remainder of the plumage bright 

 green. When this country was first settled the Parakeet was found to be com- 

 mon and quite generally distributed throughout most of the eastern United 

 States, being most abundant in Florida and the Gulf States, but extending north- 

 ward along the valleys of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Ohio rivers, reaching 

 Maryland, the Great Lakes, Iowa, and Nebraska, and exceptionally Michigan 

 and New York. But the unfortunate possession of a bright-colored plumage, 

 coupled with a degree of destructiveness to fruit orchards, and gregarious habits 

 which prompt them to attempt the succor of wounded companions, have con- 

 spired to so thin their ranks that they seem actually on the verge of extermina- 

 tion, being now restricted to a few localities in the middle portions of Florida, 

 Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. Of their appearance in bygone days, we 

 may quote from Nuttall, one of the most graceful of our early writers, who says : 

 "The Carolina Parakeets in all their movements, which are uniformly gre- 

 garious, show a peculiar predilection for the alluvial, rich, and dark forests 

 bordering the principal rivers and larger streams, in which the towering cypress 

 and gigantic sycamore spread their vast summits over a wide waste of moving 

 or stagnant waters. From these, the beech and the hackberry, they derive an 

 important supply of food. The flocks moving in the manner of Wild Pigeons 

 dart in swift and airy phalanx through the green boughs of the forest; scream- 

 ing in a general concert, they wheel in wide and descending circles round the 

 tall buttonwood, and all alight at the same instant, their green vesture, like the 

 fairy mantle, rendering them nearly invisible beneath the shady branches, where 

 they sit, perhaps arranging their plumage, and, shuffling side by side, seem to 

 caress and scratch each other's heads with all the fondness and unvarying friend- 

 ship of affectionate Doves. If the gun thin their ranks, they hover over the 

 screaming wounded or dying, and returning and flying around the place where 

 they miss their companions, in their sympathy seem to lose all idea of impending 

 danger." A few years ago Mr. Chapman found one sad remnant, aggregating 



