154 
CAROLINA PARROT. 
than the state of Maryland ; though straggling parties have been 
occasionally observed among the vallies of the Juniata; and ac- 
cording to some, even twenty-five miles to the northwest of 
Albany, in the state of New York.* But such accidental visits 
furnish no certain criteria by which to judge of their usual ex- 
tent of range; those aerial voyagers, as well as others who na- 
vigate the deep, being subject to be cast away, by the violence 
of the elements, on distant shores and unknown countries. 
From these circumstances of the northern residence of this 
species, we might be justified in concluding it to be a very 
hardy bird, more capable of sustaining cold than nine-tenths of 
its tribe; and so I believe it is; having myself seen them, in the 
month of February, along the banks of the Ohio, in a snow 
storm, flying about like pigeons, and in full cry. 
The preference, however, which this bird gives to the west- 
ern 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 
partiality equally powerful, though hitherto overlooked; name- 
ly, certain peculiar features of country, to which these birds 
are particularly and strongly attached; these are, low, rich, al- 
luvial bottoms, along the borders of creeks, covered with a 
gigantic growth of sycamore trees or button-wood — deep and 
almost impenetrable swamps, where the vast and towering cy- 
press lift their still more majestic heads; and those singular 
salines, or, as they are usually called, licks, so generally inter- 
spersed over that country, and which are regularly and eagerly 
visited by the Paroquets. A still greater inducement is the su- 
pei’ior abundance of their favourite fruits. That food which the 
Paroquet prefers to all others, is the seeds of the cockle-burr, 
a plant rarely found in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, or 
New York; but which unfortunately grows in too great abund- 
Barton’s Fragments, See, p. 6, Introd. 
