Cool Facts- The Carolina parakeet was once one of the three parrot species native to the United States. These brilliantly colored birds were once found from New York to the Gulf of Mexico along riverbanks and cypress swamps. Flocks had up to 300 individuals, building nests in tree hollows and eating nuts or fruits. Carolina parakeets were in decline since the last glacial maximum, and combined with inbreeding and capturing for museum specimens, the parakeets were eradicated from the wild by 1904. A pair of Carolina parakeets, Incas and Lady June, in the Cincinnati Zoo passed away in 1918. Strangely enough, they were not classified as extinct until 1939 under the hope that some parakeets remained in the mangroves of Florida. Today, the sun parakeet, or sun conure, remains their closest relative. Sun conures are endangered due to hunting for their feathers, habitat loss, and capture for the pet trade. Conservationists are rushing to protect the sun parakeet’s remaining habitat and cracking down on cross-border trade.
Rating- 11/10 (Possibly poisonous from their diet including cockleburs.)
[ID: A digital painting of a sun conure sitting on a simple branch against a black background, with a white outline around the bird and branch. The conure is a small parrot with a red and orange head, a yellow back, and wings that are green splashed with yellow at the shoulders, that fade to teal at the tips. It has a dark grey beak and a simple black and white eye. End ID.]
Painted over this public domain photo. This painting is public domain, and you can download the HD versions here from the Internet Archive.
You can also buy it from my Threadless store.
This is public domain, so you can use it for anything and anything you want. All I ask is that you please include the image description, or make your own, when sharing it online.
The return of the winter sun & making New Year resolutions:
there is a time of year at winter solstice, when human beings, since time out of mind, have sought to join one valuable aspect of the core self, to another venerable aspect of human dignity…
and some postulate that this sudden ‘reassembling’ of oneself, is prompted by the sunlight staying longer and longer with us… that we are affected, just as the earth is affected, moved, LONGING to bloom again.