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The Carolina parakeet (''Conuropsis carolinensis'') or Carolina conure was a small green Neotropical parrot with a bright yellow head, reddish orange face and pale beak native to the eastern, midwest and plains states of the United States and was the only indigenous parrot within its range. It was found from southern New York and Wisconsin to Kentucky, Tennessee and the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic seaboard to as far west as eastern Colorado. It lived in old-growth forests along rivers and in swamps. It was called ''puzzi la née'' ("head of yellow") or ''pot pot chee'' by the Seminole and ''kelinky'' in Chickasaw. Though formerly prevalent within its range, the bird had become rare by the middle of the 19th century. The last confirmed sighting in the wild was of the ''ludovicianus'' subspecies in 1910. The last known specimen perished in captivity at Cincinnati Zoo in 1918 and the species was declared extinct in 1939. The earliest reference to these parrots was in 1583 in Florida reported by Sir George Peckham in ''A True Report of the Late Discoveries of the Newfound Lands'' of expeditions conducted by English explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert who notes that explorers in North America "doe testifie that they have found in those countryes; ... parrots." They were first scientifically described in English naturalist Mark Catesby's two volume ''Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands'' published in London in 1731 and 1743. Carolina parakeets were probably poisonous—American naturalist and painter John J. Audubon noted that cats apparently died from eating them, and they are known to have eaten the toxic seeds of cockleburs. ==Taxonomy== ''Carolinensis'' is a species of the genus ''Conuropsis'', one of numerous genera of New World long-tailed parrots in tribe Arini, which also includes the Central and South American macaws. Tribe Arini together with the Amazonian parrots and a few miscellaneous genera make up subfamily Arinae of Neotropical parrots in family Psittacidae of true parrots. The specific name ''Psittacus carolinensis'' was assigned by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae published in 1758. The species was given its own genus ''Conuropsis'' by Italian zoologist and ornithologist Tommaso Salvadori in 1891 in his ''Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum'', volume 20. The name is derived from the Greek-ified ''conure'' ("parrot of the genus ''Conurus''" an obsolete name of genus ''Aratinga'') + ''-opsis'' ("likeness of") and Latinized ''Carolina'' (from Carolana, an English colonial province) + ''-ensis'' (of or "from a place"), therefore a bird "like a conure from Carolina". There are two recognized subspecies. The Louisiana subspecies of the Carolina parakeet, ''C. c. ludovicianus'', was slightly different in color than the nominate subspecies, being more bluish-green and generally of a somewhat subdued coloration, and went extinct in much the same way, but at a somewhat earlier date (early 1910s). The Appalachian Mountains separated these birds from the eastern ''C. c. carolinensis''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Carolina parakeet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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