The Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), or Carolina conure, is an extinct species of small green neotropical parrot with a bright yellow head, reddish orange face, and pale beak that was native to the Eastern, Midwest, and Plains States of the United States. It was the only indigenous parrot within its range, and one of only three parrot species native to the United States. The others are the thick-billed parrot, now extirpated; and the green parakeet, still present in Texas. A fourth parrot species, the red-crowned amazon, is debated.
The Carolina parakeet was called Maskowhinge in Powhatan, puzzi la née ("head of yellow") or pot pot chee by the Seminole and kelinky in Chickasaw. Though formerly prevalent within its range, the bird had become rare by the middle of the 19th century. The last confirmed sighting in the wild was of the C. c. ludovicianus subspecies in 1910. The last known specimen, a male named Incas, perished in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918, and the species was declared extinct in 1939.
The earliest reference to these parrots was in 1583 in Florida reported by Sir George Peckham in A True Report of the Late Discoveries of the Newfound Lands of expeditions conducted by English explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who notes that explorers in North America "doe testifie that they have found in those countryes; ... parrots". They were first scientifically described in English naturalist Mark Catesby's two-volume Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands published in London in 1731 and 1743.
Carolina parakeets were probably poisonous – French-American naturalist and painter John J. Audubon noted that cats apparently died from eating them, and they are known to have eaten the toxic seeds of cockleburs.
Carolinensis is a species of the genus Conuropsis, one of numerous genera of New World Neotropical parrots in family Psittacidae of true parrots.
The binomial Psittacus carolinensis was assigned by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae published in 1758. The species was given its own genus, Conuropsis, by Italian zoologist and ornithologist Tommaso Salvadori in 1891 in his Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, volume 20. The name is derived from the Greek-ified conure ("parrot of the genus Conurus" an obsolete name of genus Aratinga) + -opsis ("likeness of") and Latinized Carolina (from Carolana, an English colonial province) + -ensis (of or "from a place"), therefore a bird "like a conure from Carolina".
Two subspecies are recognized: The Louisiana subspecies of the Carolina parakeet, C. c. ludovicianus, was slightly different in color from the nominate subspecies, being more bluish-green and generally of a somewhat subdued coloration, and became extinct in much the same way, but at a somewhat earlier date (early 1910s). The Appalachian Mountains separated these birds from the eastern C. c. carolinensis.
According to a study of mitochondrial DNA recovered from museum specimens, their closest living relatives include some of the South American Aratinga parakeets: The Nanday parakeet, the sun conure, and the golden-capped parakeet. The authors note the bright yellow and orange plumage and blue wing feathers found in C. carolinensis are traits shared by another species, the jandaya parakeet (A. jandaya), that was not sampled in the study, but is generally thought to be closely related. To help resolve the divergence time, a whole genome of a preserved specimen has now been sequenced. The Carolina parakeet colonized North America about 5.5 million years ago. This was well before North America and South America were joined by the formation of the Panama land bridge about 3.5 mya. Since the Carolina parakeets' more distant relations are geographically closer to its own historic range while its closest relatives are more geographically distant to it, these data are consistent with the generally accepted hypothesis that Central and North America were colonized at different times by distinct lineages of parrots – parrots that originally invaded South America from Antarctica some time after the breakup of Gondwana, where Neotropical parrots originated approximately 50 mya.
The following cladogram shows the placement of the Carolina parakeet among its closest relatives, after a DNA study by Kirchman et al. (2012):
A fossil parrot, designated Conuropsis fratercula, was described based on a single humerus from the Miocene Sheep Creek Formation (possibly late Hemingfordian, c. 16 mya, possibly later) of Snake River, Nebraska. It was a smaller bird, three-quarters the size of the Carolina parakeet. "The present species is of peculiar interest as it represents the first known parrot-like bird to be described as a fossil from North America." (Wetmore 1926; italics added) However, it is not completely certain that the species is correctly assigned to Conuropsis.
The Carolina parakeet was a small, green parrot very similar in size and coloration to the extant jenday parakeet and sun conure – the sun conure being its closest living relative.
The majority of the parakeets' plumage was green with lighter green underparts, a bright yellow head and orange forehead and face extending to behind the eyes and upper cheeks (lores). The shoulders were yellow, continuing down the outer edge of the wings. The primary feathers were mostly green, but with yellow edges on the outer primaries. Thighs were green towards the top and yellow towards the feet. Male and female adults were identical in plumage, however males were slightly larger than females (sexually dimorphic only in size). Their legs and feet were light brown. They share the zygodactyl feet common to all the parrot family. Their eyes were ringed by white skin and their beaks were pale flesh colored. These birds weigh about 3.5 oz., are 13 in. long, and have wingspans of 21–23 in.
Young Carolina parakeets differed slightly in coloration from adults. The face and entire body were green, with paler underparts. They lacked yellow or orange plumage on the face, wings, and thighs. Hatchlings were covered in mouse-gray down, until about 39–40 days old, when green wings and tails appeared. Fledglings had full adult plumage around 1 year of age.
These birds were fairly long-lived, at least in captivity: A pair was kept at the Cincinnati Zoo for over 35 years.
The Carolina parakeet had the northernmost range of any known parrot. It was found from southern New York and Wisconsin to Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic Seaboard to as far west as eastern Colorado. It lived in old-growth forests along rivers and in swamps. Its range was described by early explorers thus: the 43rd parallel as the northern limit, the 26th as the most southern, the 73rd and 106th meridians as the eastern and western boundaries, respectively, the range included all or portions of at least 28 states. Its habitats were old-growth wetland forests along rivers and in swamps, especially in the Mississippi–Missouri drainage basin, with large hollow trees including cypress and sycamore to use as roosting and nesting sites.
Only very rough estimates of the birds' former prevalence can be made, with an estimated range of 20,000 to 2.5 million km2, and population density of 0.5 to 2.0 parrots per km2, population estimates range from tens of thousands to a few million birds (though the densest populations occurred in Florida covering 170,000 km2, so hundreds of thousands of the birds may have been in that state alone).
The species may have appeared as a very rare vagrant in places as far north as southern Ontario in Canada. A few bones, including a pygostyle, found at the Calvert Site in southern Ontario came from the Carolina parakeet. The possibility remains open that this specimen was taken there for ceremonial purposes.
The bird lived in huge, noisy flocks of as many as 300 birds. It built its nest in a hollow tree, laying two to five (most accounts say two) 1.6 in (4.1 cm) round white eggs. Reportedly, multiple female parakeets could deposit their eggs into one nest, similar to nesting behavior described in the monk parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus).