Carolina Parakeet
Conuropsis carolinensis (Linnaeus, 1758)
The Carolina parakeet was the only parrot native to the eastern United States; the last captive bird, Incas, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on 21 February 1918 after habitat loss, shooting and the pet trade erased flocks that once ranged across half the country.
Updated 25 July 2026
- Last captive individual
- Incas — died 21 February 1918, Cincinnati Zoo
- Declared extinct
- 1939 (American Ornithologists' Union)
- Range
- Eastern and southern United States
- Clutch
- Typically two to three eggs
- Closest living relatives
- Neotropical parrots — Conuropsis has no living members
- Colour
- Green body, yellow head — highly visible in flocks
The Carolina parakeet was bright green and yellow, travelled in noisy flocks, and was the only parrot native to the eastern United States. Early settlers described birds so numerous they stripped orchards and roosted in hollow trees by the hundred. By the early twentieth century the flocks were gone. The last captive individual, a male named Incas, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on 21 February 1918 — four years after Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the same building. The American Ornithologists' Union declared the species extinct in 1939. A continental parrot disappeared in living memory, and the causes were ordinary: trees cut, birds shot, nests emptied for cages.
Key facts at a glance
- The Carolina parakeet was the only parrot native to the eastern United States.
- Incas, the last captive bird, died on 21 February 1918 at the Cincinnati Zoo.
- Habitat clearance and shooting for pest control and feathers were the main pressures; flocking made groups easy to wipe out.
- Eggs and nestlings were also taken for the cage-bird trade while wild flocks were collapsing.
- Bayesian analysis of records suggests the western and eastern subspecies may have disappeared decades apart — extinction was not a single moment.
- Every surviving continental parrot facing habitat loss and trade pressure is living the same arithmetic on a different map.
How a common parrot disappeared
Nineteenth-century accounts describe Carolina parakeets from the Great Lakes to Florida and west into the Great Plains fringe. They ate seeds, fruit and cockleburs, nested in tree cavities, and stuck together when threatened — a defence that worked against hawks and failed against guns. Farmers shot them as orchard pests; the millinery trade wanted feathers; collectors wanted skins and cage birds. As bottomland forest was cleared, roost trees and nest cavities disappeared with the flocks. John James Audubon noted the decline as early as the 1830s. By the 1880s the species was largely gone east of the Mississippi outside Florida. The last widely accepted wild specimen was taken in Florida in 1904. Unconfirmed sightings continued for years afterward, which is normal for a vanishing bird: the last individuals are the hardest to prove.
Incas and the Cincinnati Zoo
Incas spent decades in captivity with a mate, Lady Jane, who died in 1917. Keepers reported that the pair laid eggs over many years but failed to raise young. When Incas died on 21 February 1918, during a cold snap in Cincinnati, the species lost its last confirmed living member. He had been housed in the same pagoda building associated with Martha, the last passenger pigeon. Two North American icons of abundance ended in the same institution within four years — a coincidence of logistics that still lands like a verdict.
What remains uncertain
The major cause is not a single smoking gun. Habitat loss, persecution and trade all operated together, and no modern survey quantified their relative weight while flocks still existed. Recent statistical work treating the eastern and western subspecies separately suggests they may have gone extinct decades apart, which would mean the process was staggered rather than simultaneous. That uncertainty does not soften the outcome. It only means the Carolina parakeet is a poor candidate for tidy morality tales and a good candidate for the harder lesson: a wide-ranging, familiar bird can be erased by ordinary land use before anyone builds a recovery plan.
Where it lived
Eastern and southern United States — the only parrot native to that region
The last one
Incas, a male, died on 21 February 1918 at the Cincinnati Zoo, in the same building where Martha, the last passenger pigeon, had died in 1914
What caused it
- 1 Clearance of bottomland forest and orchard habitat for agriculture
- 2 Shooting as a crop pest and for the millinery trade
- 3 Flocking behaviour that made entire groups easy to kill once one bird was hit
- 4 Capture for the cage-bird trade while wild numbers were still falling
What this extinction teaches
A parrot that was once common across a continent can be gone within a human lifetime when habitat, persecution and trade act together. Living Neotropical parrots face the same combination — which is why wild-caught trade and cavity-tree loss remain the pressures that decide whether macaw and amazon flocks persist.
Still here — for now
Still facing the same pressure: Macaw
Large, cavity-nesting Neotropical parrots still hit by habitat clearance and the pet trade — the Carolina parakeet's pressures, still active where forests and enforcement are weakest.
IUCN status: Varies by species — several Endangered or Critically Endangered
Did you know
Incas died in the same Cincinnati Zoo building associated with Martha, the last passenger pigeon — two emblems of North American abundance extinguished four years apart under one roof.