378 
CAROLINA PARROT. 
the valleys of the Juniata ; and, according to some, even 
twenty-five miles to the northwest of Albany, in the state of New 
York.* But such accidental visits furnish no certain criterion 
by which to judge of their usual extent of range, — those aerial 
voyagers, as well as others who navigate 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 
western 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 ; namely, certain peculiar features of country to 
which these birds are particularly and strongly attached : 
these are, low, rich, alluvial 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 cypress lifts its still more majestic 
head ; and those singular salines, or, as they are usually 
called, licks , so generally interspersed over that country, and 
which are regularly and eagerly visited by the Paroquets. A 
still greater inducement is the superior abundance of their 
favourite fruits. That food which the Paroquet prefers to all 
others is the seeds of the cockle bur, a plant rarely found in 
the lower parts of Pennsylvania or New York ; but which 
unfortunately grows in too great abundance along the shores 
H Barton’s Fragments, &c. p. 6. Introduction. 
