Carolina Parrott

Gorgeous, lively illustration of seven parrots represented feeding on a Cockle Burr. This was the only parrot species to make it into John James Audubon’s “Birds of America”, and it is now, unfortunately, extinct.

These parrots, once prolific and common, were already diminishing in numbers in Audubon’s time. The Carolina Parrot was a voracious seed eater, and would descend, en masse, onto farmer’s crops. Since the Carolina Parrot was extremely gregarious, they would flock closely together at all times. This made them easy targets for farmers with shotguns, who could dispatch several with one shot. This was one of the reasons that led to their extinction. The last one seen in the wild was in Florida in 1904, and the last one in captivity died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.