82 Daniel McKinley 



Carolina, extends my geographical history of the parakeet (McKinley 

 1960, 1964, 1965, 1976, 1977a, b, c, 1978a, b, c). Some quotations from 

 the literature may seem unnecessarily long, but they impart to modern 

 readers the enormous impact made by the new land upon early ob- 

 servers, and leave to critical minds the final evaluation of these pioneer 

 statements. 



Early and late, there is chaff among the grain. Since "Carolina" al- 

 ready has an open-ended quality about it, for example, it may be well to 

 sandwich in here a quaint and innocent early allusion to the parakeet in 

 the New World, although largely extrapolated from the cartographic. Ex- 

 cept for Hariot's Roanoke Island report for North Carolina, it is also the 

 earliest attribution of the species to the area of Carolina. Sanson d 'Ab- 

 beville, writing about 1653, said nothing about parakeets in Florida or 

 Virginia, but in regard to a vague region in between that he called (in 

 translation) "the Appalachians," he wrote: "In this region there are par- 

 rots, pigeons, turtle doves, eagles, ducks, magpies, sparrows and many 

 other types of birds." A map accompanying his account shows an inland 

 area denominated "Apalatchy Monts" which runs more or less east-west 

 between a tremendously northerly-swollen Florida and a Virginia that is 

 sort of hunched up against the Atlantic Ocean (1959:48). 



PARAKEETS IN NORTH CAROLINA: THE REPORTS 



For a state with few substantial records of the parakeet, North Carolina 

 has a history of the species that is resplendent in its antiquity. Thomas 

 Hariot (1588) reported that the ill-starred little colony on Roanoke Island 

 had parrots. In what was certainly America's first example of science for 

 science's sake, he wrote: "There are also Parats, Faulcons & Marlin 

 haukes, which although with us they bee not used for meate, yet for other 

 causes I thought good to mention" (in Quinn 1955:359). Unfortunately, 

 John White, dedicated planter of the colony (and grandfather of Virginia 

 Dare, born there), did not figure the parakeet among the lovely illustra- 

 tions of natural history subjects that he left to a careless posterity (Hulton 

 1965). 



Thus, Dare County has an early claim to parakeets. The next report af- 

 firmed that the species was found in southeastern parts of the state. Cap- 

 tain William Hilton of the West Indian island of Barbados carefully sur- 

 veyed the coast of the Carolinas in autumn 1663. His explorations of Cape 

 Fear River may have taken him to the vicinity of Fayetteville, Cumber- 

 land County, with noteworthy descriptive results. In early November, he 

 described the return down-river toward the sea (1664): "So we returned 

 . . . viewing the Land on both sides the River, and found as good tracts of 

 land, dry, well wooded, pleasant and delightful as we have seen any where 



