There was a story in Monday’s Greensboro News & Record about Carole Boston Weatherford’s new book, The Carolina Parakeet: America’s Lost Parrot in Art and Memory (Avian Publications, 2005). Weatherford traces the history and decline of North America’s only native parakeet. The Conuropsis carolinensis was once common throughout the eastern United States and is depicted in brilliantly-colored drawings by naturalists Mark Catesby and John James Audubon. A victim of hunters, collectors, and a changing environment, Carolina Parakeets have not been seen since the 1920s.
While I don’t recall the Carolina parakeet being celebrated in verse by one of North Carolina’s poets, another celebrated bird of yore recently much in the news — the ivory-billed woodpecker (the “Lord God bird”) — is referenced by Highlands’ Jonathan Williams in his poem, “An Aubade from Verlaine’s Day”.