Bill Bryson, in his book, A Short Guide to Nearly Everything, writes that the now extinct Carolina parakeet was "arguably the most striking and beautiful bird ever to live in North America."I had heard about these wonderful birds (actually, parrots) before, but had never paid much attention to them until I came across that passage that describes their emerald green bodies with golden heads.
"[A]t its peak it existed in vast numbers, exceeded only by the passenger pigeon. But the Carolina parakeet was also considered a pest by farmers and easily hunted because it flocked tightly and had a peculiar habit of flying up at the sound of gunfire (as you would expect) , but then returning almost at once to check on fallen comrades."
Obviously, behavior like that can only hold for so long. The last wild Carolina parakeet died in Florida in 1904, while the last captive one died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.
Unfortunately, that lowly last majestic bird, named Inca, was stuffed.
"And where would you go to see poor Inca now? Nobody knows," writes Bryson. "The zoo lost it."
The N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Downtown Raleigh has a copy of an Audobon depiction of the bird (pictured). And Wikipedia alludes to stuffed specimens at the Raleigh museum and of one in Germany.
