Historical Review of the Carolina Parakeet 

 in the Carolinas 



Daniel McKinley 



Department of Biological Sciences, 



State University of New York at Albany, 



Albany, New York 12222 



ABSTRACT. — Parrots or parakeets appear in many lists of Carolina 

 birds recorded by such early voyagers, explorers and promoters as 

 Thomas Hariot (1588), William Hilton (1664), Thomas Ashe (1682), 

 Samuel Wilson (1682), John Lawson (1709), Mark Catesby (1731) and 

 others. These references, when authentic, can be safely assigned to the 

 now extinct Carolina parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis . The species was so 

 named by Linnaeus (1758) from a drawing of a specimen taken in South 

 Carolina by Catesby. Despite association of the region with the bird's 

 name, a long history constitutes the bulk of evidence on the species in 

 the Carolinas. There are no specimens, exceedingly few precise claims 

 by ornithologists, and no specific references to eggs, migratory move- 

 ments or young. Little can be found to validate North Carolina's claim 

 to parakeets after about 1770 (William Bartram). For South Carolina, 

 matters are more complex: widely spaced but fairly persistent records 

 bring the bird's history there down to about the end of the Civil War, 

 with a final, no doubt storm-tossed, bird accidentally occurring about 

 1885. There was a flurry of alleged sightings in the decade of the 1930s, 

 but the birds either disappeared without documentation or were not 

 there in the first place. 



INTRODUCTION 



In an account of the Carolina parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis 

 (Linnaeus), history and biology must mix, for the species is extinct. That 

 notably handsome bird, so often remarked by early travelers, thus joins 

 the passenger pigeon and other vanished species in a group about which 

 we (as a civilization) know pretty much all that we shall know. Veteran 

 ornithologists know about it, of course, and sometimes allege a good 

 many things that a careful historian of the species learns are not true. 

 But, ask a concerned American citizen to name ten exterminated species 

 of animals and the Carolina parakeet will probably not be among them. 



Except for its name, the parrot of Carolina was not uniquely as- 

 sociated with the Carolinas. It was widely, if somewhat erratically, dis- 

 tributed in the eastern United States, being found from Florida to Texas 

 and well up the Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. 

 This report, emphasizing evidence on distribution in North and South 



Brimleyana No. 1: 81-98. March 1979. 81 



