By Tony Gazso, Interpretive Naturalist

Over the course of our bird blog, we've highlighted many of the avian animals found in northeast Ohio. From brightly-colored warblers to streaked sparrows, to our most recent series on waterfowl. In this entry, I thought it would be cool to showcase something different. A bird that's now unfortunately extinct. For most of us, the image of a parrot brings up visions of palm trees and lush jungles, not the forests of northeast Ohio. But for many years, one parrot did call our region home. The Carolina parakeet was the only species of parrot native to the eastern US and was found from Pennsylvania west to eastern Colorado, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. They preferred forested and swampy areas near rivers and other bodies of water. Although some studies have found that the bird may have been more common in southern Ohio, it was certainly found in our area at least occasionally as there are historical reports of the bird from Lake Erie. 

The Carolina parakeet was a mostly green bird with a yellow and red head that was slightly larger than a blue jay. Like many parrots, they gathered in large, very noisy flocks and nested in the hollows of trees. Their diet consisted mostly of tree seeds, such as those large round balls found on sycamores, but they also ate a variety of fruit. The Carolina parakeet is also somewhat famous for being able to eat the seeds of common cocklebur. The plant, found throughout our region, is toxic and very few animals can eat it without getting sick. Carolina parakeets ate so much cocklebur, in fact, that they are believed to have been poisonous following numerous historic accounts of cats eating the birds and getting sick or even dying. 

Carolina parakeets were once fairly common throughout their range, but declined rapidly after Europeans arrived. Many factors likely contributed to their decline, but we do know that their populations declined rapidly, suggesting human involvement was the main culprit. Habitat destruction was likely the largest cause as many of the forests were cleared by European settlers for homes and farmland. Additionally, in much of their range, they were deemed a nuisance and culled to keep from destroying crops. By the mid 1800s, there were very few remaining, and the last known wild Carolina parakeet met its end in Florida in 1904. The final bird in captivity died in 1918 at the Cincinnati Zoo. A few unsubstantiated sightings came in the years that followed, but the bird was officially declared extinct in 1939. Many specimens have been preserved in museums around the country.

Parrots are more common in the U.S. than you might believe. There are a couple of Mexican species that creep over the border, as well as small populations in major cities such as Los Angeles, Boston and New York where released pet populations have established themselves. As a birder, it was always cool to see a monk parakeet in Queens, NY, or lilac-crowned parrot in LA, but it still always felt like I was seeing something out of place. I wonder if I'd still feel that way had the Carolina parakeet not gone extinct. And while Ohio may never again see its own population of parrots, it's pretty crazy to think that just a couple hundred years ago, it would have been possible to walk along the shores of Lake Erie and see parrots fly over.