Talk:Carolina Parakeet

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What is the closest related living parrot to the Carolina Parakeet and how do we go about getting some cloning (from DNA extracted from bones that arean't even 100 years ol yet!) done on this parrot? I would love to see a cloned version introduced in our already fractured environment (at least this introduction wouldn't be TOTALLY feral- it might even help, who knows?). At least have a few clones in the zoos, this would be an EXCELLENT candidate to resurect an extinct animal. Please someone, pick up the ball and run with this (I'm too poor and only have a BA degree, otherwise, I'd try to do it!). Let us know if you start an initiative (and have a website) to get these birds flying again. THANKS!

Have there been any attempts to clone these with a closely related living parakeet? I have seen green pigeon sized parrots flying near to the Ohio River in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area. I have seen them in the same area for several years in a row but there seems to be only about 5 birds in this small flock. Maybe the Carolina parrot could be cloned with these parrots (probably was monk parakeets?). What a shameful and precious loss to our nation. I wonder what a large flock of Carolina Parrots must have sounded like and the explosion of color must had looked like when a big paddle-wheeled steam boat passed their riverbank nesting areas on the Ohio River; I hope someone admired them for their natural beauty.

There is an excellent account of the beauty and history of this bird in Christopher Cokinos's Hope is the Thing with Feathers. Cloning from specimens of birds, alas, is likely impossible--there's just very little intact DNA left in a dried specimen. (See the discussion for Talk:Passenger Pigeon.)

--Cotinis 09:10, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be cool to recreate this species. --[[User:Mitternacht90|Mitternacht90]] 00:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't you be able to get some type of Bone DNA from one of the birds? If they can find DNA in 100,000 year old bones surely they could in these.--Josh 04:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Source/Quote needed

the following text needs source/quote to verify.

"This combination of factors extirpated the species from most of its range until the early years of the 20th century. However, the last populations were not much hunted for food or feathers, nor did the farmers in rural Florida consider them a pest as the benefit of the birds' love of cockleburs clearly outweighed the minor damage they did to the small-scale garden plots. The final extinction of the species is somewhat of a mystery, but the most likely cause seems to be that the birds succumbed to poultry disease, as suggested by the rapid disappearance of the last, small, but apparently healthy and reproducing flocks of these highly social birds. If this is true, the very fact that the Carolina Parakeet was finally tolerated to roam in the vicinity of human settlements proved its undoing."

--Hkchan123 15:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

From:

Snyder, N. F. R., and K. Russell (2002): "Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)". In: The Birds of North America, No. 667 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA. doi:10.2173/bna.667

"POPULATION REGULATION, CAUSES OF EXTINCTION

The pattern of the Carolina Parakeet’s decline suggests that whatever reproductive problems the species may have had, its disappearance was likely due largely to excessive mortality and other subtractions from wild populations. Specifically, many populations (e.g., Audubon 1831, Scott 1889, Furnas 1902) evidently disappeared so extremely rapidly that factors beyond reproductive deficiency were probably predominant, especially considering the substantial longevity known for some individuals in captivity. It is notable as well that substantial reproduction was still occurring in at least some of the last populations for which data were available. Here we note the large number of immatures in Ridgway’s series of birds collected in 1896 in central Florida (McKinley 1985); the quick disappearance after 1915 of the substantial numbers of parakeets known to Minor McGlaughlin of Olney, FL, despite presence of juveniles in the flock (NFRS interviews of 1979); the late (1927) nesting records of Doe in central Florida, involving 4 birds of a flock of 7; the apparent family group of parakeets seen by Warren Shokes in 1938 along the Santee River of S. Carolina (Sprunt 1938); and the Furnas (1902) account of people locating numerous nestling parakeets shortly before complete disappearance of the birds around 1866 from one local region of se. Nebraska.

However, beyond the generality that we should probably look more toward mortality factors than reproductive factors, the identification of the specific causes most crucially involved in the species’ demise is a difficult task of attempting to reconstruct reality from the random bits and pieces in historical accounts. The task is not so much a matter of trying to discover negative forces on the species as one of discriminating the comparative importances of the many negative forces that were surely involved.

By far the most perceptive effort to achieve order out of the chaos of accounts has been provided by McKinley (1960: 282–283), who was disinclined to conclude that the primary causes of extinction were as obvious as they are often portrayed. His evaluation of the importance of various factors, with which we agree almost entirely, as far as it goes, was presented most succinctly in his 1960 account of the species in Missouri:

“The birds’ passing is a mystery. They were undoubtedly held in disfavor for their destruction of fruit, but that point ought not to be overemphasized. They never appeared on a bounty list, and they were almost totally ignored in the county histories. Surely, if they were ever a scourge to agriculture, their names would have appeared more commonly on the pages of these two records of materialism and manifest destiny. Some were probably shot for food or other uses, but the number could not have been great. More often, perhaps, they were shot because they furnished an easy, returning target.

“Primeval numbers of parakeets are not easy to guess at: they were noisy, colorful, and conspicuous birds that went about in flocks; the extent of their wanderings is not known. That is, probably anyone with an eye for birds would see them; and if they wandered very much, one flock might be seen by people in different areas. Perhaps they had a liking for the kind of habitat created by man, at least for purposes of feeding; if so, the lack of a general sentiment in pioneer society for their protection may have been their downfall. The possibility that disease was responsible cannot be ruled out, but except for a suggestion of ‘apoplexy,’ I have no evidence for it.

“Since parakeets used hollow trees for roosting and nesting, there may have been connections between the disappearance of the birds and the wholesale cutting of ‘bee trees.’ The European honey bee barely preceded the American white man in invading the central parts of America, and it became extremely abundant within a short time. I am convinced, by numerous references collected during a search through early literature, that the magnitude of destruction of hollow trees by ‘bee hunters’ in search of honey and wax is little appreciated. What effect, if any, that had on the parakeet is unknown. Perhaps the bees themselves discouraged nesting and roosting flocks of parakeets. Reasons for their decline are made doubly difficult to evaluate by the lack of knowledge of the breeding biology, habitat, and social requirements of the species.”

Shooting

McKinley’s (1960) reservations about the importance of shooting to protect crops were greatly expanded and bolstered in his 1966 and 1980 accounts and echo the accounts of Scott (1888, 1889, 1898), Chapman (1932), and Bailey (1925) for the parakeets in Florida. Shooting nevertheless has long been the favorite explanation for the species’ disappearance, perhaps largely tracing back to the renowned account of vengeful mayhem provided by Audubon (1831: 136):

“The Parrot does not satisfy himself with Cockleburs, but eats or destroys every kind of fruit indiscriminately, and on this account is always an unwelcome visitor to the planter, the farmer, or the gardener. The stacks of grain put up in the field are resorted to by flocks of these birds, which frequently cover them so entirely, that they present to the eye the same effect as if a brilliantly colored carpet had been thrown over them. They cling around the whole stack, pull out the straws, and destroy twice as much of the grain as would suffice to satisfy their hunger. They assail the Pear and Apple-trees when the fruit is yet very small and far from being ripe, and this merely for the sake of the seeds. As on the stalks of Corn, they alight on the Apple-trees of our orchards, or the Pear-trees in the gardens, in great numbers and, as if through mere mischief, pluck off the fruits, open them up to the core, and disappointed at the sight of the seeds, which are yet soft and of a milky consistence, drop the apple or pear, and pluck another, passing from branch to branch, until the trees which were before so promising are left completely stripped, like the ship water-logged and abandoned by its crew, floating on the yet agitated waves, after the tempest has ceased. They visit the Mulberries, Pecan-nuts, Grapes, and even the seeds of the Dog-wood, before they are ripe, and on all commit similar depredations. The Maize alone never attracts their notice.

“Do not imagine, reader, that these outrages are borne without severe retaliation on the part of the planters. So far from this, the Parakeets are destroyed in great numbers, for whilst busily engaged in plucking off the fruits or tearing the grain from the stacks, the husbandman approaches them with perfect ease, and commits great slaughter among them. All the survivors rise, shriek, fly around about for a few minutes, and again alight on the very place of most imminent danger. The gun is kept at work; eight or ten, or even twenty, are killed at every discharge. The living birds, as if conscious of the death of their companions, sweep over their bodies screaming as loud as ever, but still return to the stack to be shot at, until so few remain alive, that the farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more of his ammunition. I have seen several hundreds destroyed in this manner in the course of a few hours, and have procured a basketful of these birds at a few shots, in order to make choice of good specimens for drawing the figures by which this species is represented in the plate now under your consideration.”

Audubon’s account was far from the only account of the ease of slaughtering parakeets. Other similar firsthand accounts were presented by Wilson (1811: 92), Townsend (1839: 20–24), Maynard (1881: 251), and G. de Beaumont (in Pierson 1938: 594), and it cannot be doubted that the species was extraordinarily vulnerable to shooting. Further, the widespread extent of wildlife shooting in bygone eras is sometimes difficult to comprehend from a modern perspective. An astonishingly high proportion of the early accounts of the species mention shooting of the birds observed, surely an impressive testimony to the former social acceptability of killing Carolina Parakeets—for reasons ranging from scientific collecting, to hunting for food, to feather-hunting, to protection of agricultural crops, to nothing more than curiosity or sport.

It is also relevant to note here that the pattern of extinction of various psittacine species in the West Indies indicates that parakeets tended to be much more susceptible to disappearance than the larger Amazona parrots, and the primary causal factor for this difference may well be the greater tendency of parakeets to become crop pests (Snyder et al. 1987). Thus many of the original amazons of the Lesser Antillean islands still persist today, while the parakeets of these islands all disappeared centuries ago, a situation also found in Puerto Rico. And on Hispaniola and Cuba at the present time, it is par-akeets, not the amazons, that are most usually slaughtered for crop depredations and are in most imminent danger of extinction (J. Wiley pers. comm.).

Yet despite these vulnerability factors and the clearly massive stresses on early Carolina Parakeet populations from shooting, we agree with McKinley (1980), Scott (1888, 1889, 1898), Chapman (1932), and Bailey (1925), that gunfire is an unconvincing explanation for the final disappearance of the bird. Our orientation on this subject is colored strongly by information consistently received in 1979 from interviews of senior citizens who were personally familiar with the species in the 1910s and 1920s in central Florida. Not one of these people indicated ever having witnessed or heard of people shooting parakeets during this era, and in fact they found such a practice to be quite unlikely, even though several freely admitted to having been plume hunters, gator poachers, and moonshiners. Shooting parakeets struck them as a waste of ammunition, as by the 1910s and 1920s parakeets were not sought after for the plume and pet trades, were too small to be worthwhile game, and surely were not a threat to crops as there were no crops other than small family gardens, which the parakeets left alone. The region where they lived was used almost exclusively for grazing livestock, lumbering, hunting, and fishing, not for agriculture.

Instead, the parakeet at that time was considered mainly a good friend as it fed heavily on sandspurs (Cenchrus sp.) and cockleburs (Xanthium sp.), the noxious plant pests that residents had to battle on a daily basis around their homes. Further, because there were very few people living in the region early in the twentieth century, our informants doubted strongly that any significant amount of persecution of the parakeets for any reasons could have escaped their notice. These people remembered substantial flocks of parakeets still in existence, and yet these flocks disappeared during their lifetimes for no apparent cause. Shooting simply does not offer a plausible explanation for their final disappearance.

However, there had been substantial shooting stress on the species in this region prior to 1910. In fact, it was in this region that a significant fraction of the extant scientific specimens of the species was collected by ornithologists such as Frank Chapman, Walter Hoxie, and Robert Ridgway, up until, but not beyond 1904 (see McKinley 1985). And it was here that Lawrence Will (1977: 95) reported intensive shooting of parakeets for the millinery trade right after 1900. Nevertheless, the general evidence summoned by McKinley (1980) for shooting of parakeets for their feathers was almost entirely limited to the nineteenth century, and in our central Florida interviews, the only account we heard of parakeets taken for the plume trade (a report of Bud Smith) was for before 1910 and was of birds taken in the Big Cypress, far to the south.

Thus, although we are quite confident that parakeet shooting was no longer prevalent in the vicinity of Okeechobee and the Kissimmee Prairie by the 1910s and 1920s, it was surely a significant stress earlier, both for the plume trade and to satisfy the cravings of specimen collectors. But if shooting was no longer a significant threat in the 1910s and 1920s, what other stresses might account for the disappearance of the last birds in central Florida? Below we consider the major possibilities.

Capture for the pet trade

As reviewed by McKinley (1980), it is difficult to get any quantitative feel for the overall impact of the pet trade on the species, either locally or nationally and internationally, although the species was common and esteemed in European live-bird markets in the mid- to late nineteenth century (Mann 1848, Russ 1884). Evidently, captive parakeets were more popular overseas than in North America. Presumably most of these birds came from Florida, and they were evidently captured mainly by placing nets over roost holes or by chopping down roost trees at night or by netting birds attracted to tethered decoy birds (Butler 1931).

That there was a lively local interest in the pet trade of parakeets in the Okeechobee region in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries is clear from accounts of Will (1977: 95), Harper (1917; USFWS files unpubl.), Chapman (1890) and Butler (1931) and from an account in D. J. Nicholson’s notes of 1926 of Henry Redding netting 2 flocks totaling 76 parakeets in Feb 1898 from 2 hollow cypresses. Nevertheless, as for plume-hunting of parakeets, we obtained no interview evidence for continuation of the pet trade in parakeets in the 1910s and 1920s in central Florida, and doubt strongly that it was a significant factor in the final disappearance of the birds in this region.

Food supplies

With the species’ fondness for abundant weed seeds, such as sandspurs, thistles, and cockleburs, and the wide distribution of its other food resources (see Food habits: feeding, above), many of which have probably been continuously common in the region, it is also difficult to believe that the last populations of central Florida, or elsewhere, may have been stressed by food scarcity. The parakeet was not a food specialist and was not restricted to food supplies found only in virgin forests. Despite the cutting of large cypresses and pines during the period of the species’ final disappearance in Florida, it seems highly unlikely that these processes would have placed any populations at risk of starvation. In fact, it is reasonable to speculate that many of the habitat changes taking place may actually have increased food supplies for the species.

Nest sites

More plausible is the possibility that the lumbering of pines and cypresses in central Florida during the 1910s and 1920s might have affected the species through nest-site availability. Surely this lumbering must have destroyed some nest sites. Nevertheless, residents interviewed in the region all remembered woodpeckers, including both Ivory-billed and Pileated (Dryocopus pileatus) woodpeckers, as continuing to be common through this period, while the parakeets became increasingly scarce. And if numerous and diverse woodpeckers were still present, it seems likely that potential nest holes for parakeets were also still present, as from the nests found by Doe (unpubl. notes, Florida State Museum) and the account of Audubon (1831) it appears that the parakeets were able to use abandoned woodpecker nests or roosts for breeding (see Breeding: nest site, above). Further, Doe’s nest records indicated that the species sometimes bred in oaks of the Kissimmee Prairie, which have never been significantly lumbered, so it is doubtful that the species may ever have been without abundant potential nest sites in the region.

McKinley’s (1960, 1980) suggestion that the species may have faced competition for nest sites with honeybees is reasonable, but subject to the qualification that many parakeet nests were likely too small to be attractive to bees. It is well established (Lindauer 1961, Seeley 1977) that honeybees strongly prefer cavities of about 40 l volume, and it appears that the one single-occupancy nest site described in any detail by Doe (see Breeding: nest site, above) was likely far smaller (it was only about 30 cm deep, and at generous estimate of an internal diameter of 20 cm it would have held only about 10 l)—far too small to be generally attractive to bees. Similarly the nest holes of all known woodpecker species of the region are much smaller than 40 l (e.g., the Ivory-billed nests measured by Tanner [1942] had volumes on the order of only 10–15 l).

McKinley’s concerns about interactions with honeybees are potentially much more cogent for roost sites and communal breeding sites of the parakeets, which were likely much larger natural cavities or they would not have accommodated whole flocks of parakeets. On the other hand, if the parakeets sometimes did nest in open twig nests, the potential for negative effects on breeding from honeybees would presumably have been minor. There surely were honeybee hives in the large cypresses of the Okeechobee-Kissimmee Prairie region in the 1910s and 1920s, as we learned from several of those interviewed who had been “bee hunters” in their youth. But whether there were also harmful competitive interactions between the bees and parakeets was never documented.

McKinley was also concerned that the felling of “bee trees” might have represented a focused attrition factor for suitable parakeet nest trees. Here we note, however, that old “bee hunters” we interviewed reported that even though they normally felled “bee trees” to get honey, they never noticed any obvious scarcity of bee hives or hollow trees during that period. It is also relevant to note that, in those days, lumbermen normally considered old hollow trees unsuitable for cutting.

Altogether, we are inclined to agree with McKinley that honeybees may have provided some negative effects on Carolina Parakeet reproduction and roosting, although it is impossible to say how serious these effects may have been. Even if the impacts might have been real, however, it is doubtful they were a major cause of decline, as it is doubtful that the bees may have caused significant mortality of adults or that reproductive problems overall were the most important factors in the demise of the species, judging from the speed of decline of various populations.

Predators and parasites

No information exists to suggest major problems with parasites or predators, though these factors are hard to eliminate conclusively from some role in the decline. To some extent, stresses from parasites might parallel the potential stresses from diseases discussed below. The recorded instances of interactions with natural predators (which would likely have been relatively conspicuous to observers), are so few as to be ap-parently unlikely as a significant factor (see Causes of mortality: predation, above).

Disease

McKinley (1960, 1980) clearly recognized the potential for disease being a significant factor in the parakeet’s demise, but he found only scattered evidence of disease in his exhaustive literature review and left the matter at that. Yet disease does offer one of the more plausible explanations for the disappearance of the last populations on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Psittacines are known to be highly sensitive to many avian diseases (Wilson et al. 1994), and this susceptibility is especially great for exotic diseases to which they have not been exposed in their evolutionary histories. Diseases of wildlife are often difficult to detect unless special efforts are made to that end, because sick and dying individuals are often taken so quickly by predators and scavengers that few dead bodies persist to alert observers to the existence of problems.

The Carolina Parakeet, as a highly social psittacine roosting in dense groups, was clearly a species with high vulnerability to local spread of disease. And as we learned in interviews, the species had other characteristics leading to a high potential for exposure to exotic pathogens, especially its tendency to feed close to human structures and to roost in human structures. In fact, we learned of the existence of 3 separate human structures in central Florida where Carolina Parakeets habitually roosted, something that has not been previously recorded. One of these was a barn of Minor McGlaughlin’s grandmother where he commonly saw the parakeets perching on rafters during the day and hanging by their bills, lined up along the sides of the rafters, at night. Another was an old log cabin house next to the Olney Post Office on Frank Padgett’s place that Hiram Padgett had once told McGlaughlin hosted parakeets. The third was a log cabin near Fort Drum that Alexander Sprunt IV (pers. comm.) recalled he was shown as a young boy in about 1940 and in which the triangular marks of parakeet bills on the rafters were still easily seen.

The tendency of the parakeets to feed next to human structures may in part have been a reflection of the common tendency for ranchers to plant fruit trees next to their barns and homes, but it may also have been a reflection of rank growths of cockleburs and sandspurs in the well-fertilized vicinities of barns and homes, as McGlaughlin emphasized to NFRS. The trait of roosting in human structures may have developed as a direct result of frequent feeding adjacent to these structures.

In any event, the close proximity of parakeets to structures offered an ideal setting for spread into parakeet populations of any diseases (or potentially also parasites) that may have been carried by poultry or other domestic animals in and around the structures. Domestic animals were common throughout the region, and chickens, in particular, have been known as carriers of a great variety of diseases, some of them of exotic origin, especially when kept under the sorts of conditions that characterized most early rural households. Parakeets feeding close to or on the ground on sandspurs, cockleburs, and thistles in areas frequented by domestic poultry would have been highly vulnerable to contact with any contaminated fecal material or aerosols that might have been present.

Some of the principal viral, bacterial, and fungal diseases that could have affected the parakeets were: fowl or avian pox (Poxvirus avium), fowl typhoid or salmonellosis (Salmonella sp.), fowl or avian cholera (Pasteurella multocida), avian pseudotuberculosis (Yersina pseudotuberculosis), avian tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis), psittacosis or chlamydiosis (Chlamydia sp.), listeriosis (Listeria monocytogenes), and candidiasis (Candida albicans). The strain of Newcastle disease (a viral disease) that swept the U.S. in the early 1970s had a particular affinity for psittacines and often produced nervous symptoms similar to those described in some historical records for the Carolina Parakeet. While this disease was only first recognized in 1926, apparently originating in the Far East, it could have been present earlier in precursor strains and not have been detected by the veterinary technology then available (see Alexander 1988).

The patterns of decline of the Carolina Parakeet evident in the literature and in interviews appear fully consistent with sporadic outbreaks of disease. Judging from available reports, a number of the last populations exhibited very rapid crashes to extinction (e.g., the population described by Furnas [1902] and the local population known to Minor Mc-Glaughlin in the late 1910s), while other populations, such as the small population followed by Oscar Baynard in the 1930s (assuming its validity) and the small population in the vicinity of Gum Slough in the late 1910s and 1920s, apparently persisted fairly stably for relatively long periods, although the Gum Slough population evidently winked out abruptly after 1927. This diversity of patterns is predictable for a patchily distributed species sensitive to local outbreaks of serious disease. And with the steady settlement of regions such as the Kissimmee Prairie early in the twentieth century, exotic-disease episodes tracing to domestic animals were arguably a continually increasing threat that might plausibly have left some populations unscathed for periods of time, but in the long run might have affected all populations.

In our judgment, disease is the threat that appears most consistent with available information on final disappearance of the species in central Florida, although earlier declines in the region had likely been produced in part by other stresses such as shooting and capture for the pet trade. Of course, disease may have stressed the parakeet throughout its range and history. The spatial pattern of decline, paralleling settlement of various regions by Europeans, is consistent with disease, as is the tendency for the last known populations to have been located in relatively remote regions. And to the extent that disease may have been a function of the bird’s ex-posure to domestic animals, one can even make a case that the extinction of the species may have followed inexorably from the species’ attraction to cockleburs. Wilson (1811) attempted to explain the distribution and abundance of the parakeet largely on the basis of this one plant’s distribution, and its importance in the diet of the species is attested to by many accounts (Appendix 2). It is tempting to hypothesize that the association of cockleburs with human habitations and domestic animals may have provided a lethal magnet to bring population after population of parakeets into close proximity to pathogens with which the species could not successfully cope, especially because of its highly social habits.

Overall, disease offers a more satisfactory primary explanation for final extinction of the parakeet than is offered by other known stresses, although the evidence for disease is largely circumstantial and other stresses surely contributed to the species’ decline. If indeed the parakeet had major problems with disease, its loss may have paralleled the extinction of many of the native birds of Hawaii, which evidently succumbed mainly to disease threats to which they were poorly adapted to resist (Warner 1968, Van Riper et al. 1986)." Dysmorodrepanis 16:24, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] more info

I believe more information is required on this article and subjet. We have more information on dinosaurs that were extinct millions of years ago, while almost none on the Carolina Parakeets which only died out a hundred years ago. I believe with more scientific examinations of the skeletons and feathers, the scientists could achieve dramatic results concerning the Carolina Parakeet, and how it lived.