Carolina parakeet and smaller songbirds.
Hand colored engraving, after a drawing by Alexander Wilson.
In: Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology, or, The Natural History of the Birds of the United States, vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1811).
Wilson’s image of the now extinct Carolina parrot (now called the Carolina parakeet) captures the bird in an active pose. Once ubiquitous throughout the Southern states up through Ohio, the birds fed in large flocks on cockleburs and fruits. Wilson describes a flock screaming through the woods to settle at a salt lick, like a "carpet of the richest green, orange and yellow." The birds’ depredations on fruit trees brought them into conflict with farmers. Although this colorful, noisy, and gregarious species outlasted the passenger pigeon, hunting and habitat loss eventually extinguished it by the 1930s.
Bequest: James Bowdoin III