It’s a safe bet that no one alive has seen a living Conuropsis carolinensis, aka Carolina Parakeet, since they went extinct in the 1920s, but were almost unknown in the wild as long ago as the 1860s. I’ve seen paintings in books, by Audubon and by Alexander Wilson, but none of those paintings has the vividness of this photo of a mounted specimen from Harvard’s Museum of Natural History. You better believe I’ve put a copy of the book on my wishlist.
Since seeing that photo on wired.com, I went over to Wikipedia, and found some other photos, one of which I reproduce below. What a bird! Too bad there are none left Out There…
