The last passenger pigeon died in September 1914 and within 3 years the last Carolina Parakeet fell from it's perch in it's nearby enclosure in the Cincinnati Zoo. The only parrot native to the U.S. we can blame its demise on habitat destruction, feather trade, sport, meat and the pet market. Farmers considered the bird a pest.

The colorful bird was already being depleted when Cincinnati wildlife artist and naturalist John James Audubon wrote in 1831, "Our Parakeets are rapidly diminishing in number; and in some districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen."He wrote,"The Parakeets are destroyed in great numbers, for whilst busily engaged in plucking off the fruits or tearing the grain from the stacks, the husbandman approaches them with perfect ease, and commits great slaughter among them....the gun is kept at work....until so few remain alive, that the farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more of his ammunition."

While the parakeets were unwelcome visitors to the farmer audubon appreciated their merits. "The woods are the habitation best fitted them, and there the richness of their plumage, their beautiful mode of flight, and even the screams, afford welcome intimation that our darkest forests and most sequestered swamps are not destitute of charms."

This watercolor was user in Carole Weatherford's account of the bird.

memorial in the Missing Animals of Ohio Graveyard here