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YahooThis release just has a whiff of April Fool to me... I hope not, but...
posted on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 1:11pm
Carolina Parakeet Rediscovery
Carolina Parakeet: A photo of a Carolina Parakeet researchers named "Coqueta" now living in captivity in Honduras.
Courtesy John Heldee, Cornell UniversityHuge news in the bird world today as the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology announced the re-discovery of a small isolated population of the "extinct" Carolina parakeet. This news comes hot on the heels of an announcement this month by National Geographic that another extinct species the Worchesters Buttonquail was photographed.
The news from Cornell, as detailed in this press release is a far greater story. The Carolina Parakeet was the only member of the parrot family found in the United States. It was thought they were extinct but a small non-migratory population was found in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in the Mosquitia region of northeastern Honduras.
Full details will come out in an article in Science magazine this month but lead researcher Hubin Tubbs has said, "The bird we currently have in captivity, the individuals we have seen in the wild and the male we are tracking through telemetry are absolutely the Carolina Parakeet. We know from historical data that the Carolina Parakeet was migratory to this general region. There must have been individuals that did not migrate and they have formed a small but viable non-migratory population all this time."
Your Comments, Thoughts, Questions, Ideas
I think there is more than a wiff of April's Fool. The bird in the image looks more like a Jenday Conure http://www.parrots.org/index.php/encyclopedia/profile/jandaya_conure/ than a Carolina Parakeet http://www.parrots.org/index.php/encyclopedia/profile/carolina_parakeet/ Notice the Carolina Parakeet has a horn colored beak. The bird in the image in the press release has a black beak.
If you go to Cornell's news pages they don't mention anything about the rediscovery of the Carolina Parakeet http://www.news.cornell.edu/ I would expect they would be posting it themselves.
If this is a true story they certainly selected the incorrect photo for their press release.
posted on Thu, 04/02/2009 - 7:56am
Sadly this is a joke. The photo is a photoshopped image of a conure. Notice the black beak; Carolina 'keets had a horn colored beak. :(
posted on Thu, 04/02/2009 - 9:37am
To me the image looks like a composite using the head and neck of a Sun Conure and the body of another bird.
posted on Sat, 04/04/2009 - 5:09am
The number of Carolina Parakeets in Honduras is EXACTLY the same as the number of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in North America!!
posted on Sat, 04/04/2009 - 8:37pm
you can obviously see it was a head of maybe a Sun Conure, photoshoped on a body of another bird.
posted on Sat, 04/04/2009 - 9:20pm
I grew up seeing the Carolina Parakeet as a child every so often in SC. I saw as many as 20 + in a flock after hurricane Hugo and during Christmas of 1989 when it snowed. The birds nested across the street from my home and raised their young. My family later moved from my childhood home several years later when I was in my early twenties. There are a number of swampy areas where I saw these parakeets along the Ashley River. I am very acquainted with the markings of this species having grown up with the Audubon painting in my living room as well as a museum in my city that had a few specimens on display. These were not Monk parakeets.
posted on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 3:00am
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