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."
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This release just has a whiff of April Fool to me... I hope not, but...
i never told anyboby this before because i did not want anybody to thing i'm crazy but back in feb 2009 i think i just saw a passenger pigeon heres what it looked like it's i were sorta red and it had a gray back like a passenger pigeon but the chest wants exacly red it was light gray but at first i thougth it was a mourning dove but it was the almost the same size as pigeons you see a the park anly a little smaller and i saw this bird in the mourning at around 7.25 am wile i was walking to my bus stop on top of a mail box,thats all i can say
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.
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. :(
To me the image looks like a composite using the head and neck of a Sun Conure and the body of another bird.
The number of Carolina Parakeets in Honduras is EXACTLY the same as the number of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in North America!!
you can obviously see it was a head of maybe a Sun Conure, photoshoped on a body of another bird.
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.
Well, I guess the cats out of the bag now. For over 10 years I've been raising and releasing Carolina Parakeets here in Ohio. My last release was in October of this year when I released 17 adults and 9 sub-adults. Most years I don't release this many, but I'm running out of space to keep them (I'm enlarging my Great Auk and Dodo rearing pens and need the space).
I'm also having trouble with my Labrador Ducks. Being domisticated so long, they are not taking to the water as I feel they should. I've enlisted a pair of Pink Ducks to teach my ducks to swim, but so far, not much sucess. I was hoping to be able to release a few passenger pigeons and heath hens, but my moas excaped their pens and devoured many of these two species. As you know, Moas are big birds with equally big appitites. Nothing else to report.....oh yeah, my dusky seaside sparrows were caught out in the rain last week and are not as dark (fading) as they were. I'm hoping during the next molt, their true colors will come back.
I DID SEE THE IVORY BILLED WOODPECKER AT THE ISLE OF PALMS BACK IN 1962 . WE REPORTED IT TO THE AUDUBON SOCIETY AT THE TIME . THERE WERE EIGHT OF US THAT SAW IT .
this is FAKE !!!
Compare the beak, feet and tail of this bird to the pictures of the real one online. To goood to be true...
What a hoax, it really disapoints me that some would misled the public on the tragic end to this bird.
im pretty sure this isnt a hoax the ivory color on thier beak could of been black but has been dead for so many years it changed like anything would you cant stuff a beak and Fiel Sparrow are you serious you have been letting caralina parakeets go for 10 years and didnt tell the goverment so it could be done on a larger scale and save them if you got them tell the press it could save thier species
It can't be a Carolina Parakeet because the beak is black. If you look up the carolina parakeet it has an ivory colored beak. I could be wrong and hope I am.
This is a conure head, I instantly recognized it.
You can obviously see the blurred line where it was Photoshopped.
Clearly a (BAD) joke, this is a photograph of a South American Conure, and is clearly not even close to being a Carolina Parakeet.
Did anyone see a post date? As much as I want this to be true, I'm pretty sure this is an April fools joke. I think that there are as many living Carolina parakeets in that picture as there are Mastodons in my backyard-0!
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