Carolina Parakeet
The Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) or Carolina Conure is a species of small neotropical parrot native to the Eastern, Midwestern and Great Plains states of the U.S.A. They went extinct in 1918 but was brought back to life via cloning and temporal dislocation technologies by the Greene Foundation in the early 2010’s.
Description
The Carolina parakeet is a small, green parrot very similar in size and coloration to the jenday parakeet and sun conure – the sun conure being its closest living relative.
The majority of the parakeets' plumage is green with lighter green underparts, a bright yellow head and orange forehead and face extending to behind the eyes and upper cheeks. The shoulders are yellow, continuing down the outer edge of the wings. The primary feathers are mostly green, but with yellow edges on the outer primaries. Thighs are green towards the top and yellow towards the feet. Male and female adults are identical in plumage, however males are slightly larger than females. Their legs and feet are light brown. They share the zygodactyl feet common to all the parrot family. Their eyes are ringed by white skin and their beaks are pale flesh colored. These birds weigh about 3.5 oz., are 13 in. long, and have wingspans of 21–23 in.
Young Carolina parakeets differ slightly in coloration from adults. The face and entire body are green, with paler underparts. They lack yellow or orange plumage on the face, wings, and thighs. Hatchlings are covered in mouse-gray down, until about 39–40 days old, when green wings and tails appear. Fledglings have full adult plumage around 1 year of age.
These birds are fairly long-lived, at least in captivity: being able to live for over 35 years
Ecology
Social and noisy birds, the Carolina Parakeet live in large flocks in the wild, with up to 300 birds in a flock. The nest in hollow trees.
Carolina Parakeets mostly eat the seeds of forest trees and shrubs, such as cypress, hackberries, beeches, sycamore, elm, pine, maple, oak, thistles and sandspurs. It also enjoys fruits like apples, grapes and figs, flower buds, grain crops and insects. They especially enjoy toxic cockleburrs
There are about 600 Carolina Parakeets that have been released into the wild so far, 300 of which live in a huge flock in the cypress swamps outside of New Orleans. The remainder of the population live in smaller flocks of about 15 to 20 across the Eastern Coast.
Biology and Evolution
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 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.
Conservation
Carolina Parakeets are held at the Green City Zoo, Zoland Park Zoo, Cincinnati Zoo and North Carolina Zoo