In the later octavo edition of Birds of America, John James Audubon referred to the Carolina Parrot as a parakeet. “Our Parakeets are very rapidly diminishing in number; and in some districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are now to be seen.” In his drawing of the Carolina Parrot, Audubon shows seven parakeets almost blanketing a cocklebur plant. Part of the downfall for the Carolina parakeet was being partial to more than just cockleburs. According to Audubon, the bird ate or destroyed “almost every kind of fruit indiscriminately.” They visited “the mulberries, pecan-nuts, grapes, and even the seeds of the dog-wood, before they are ripe, and on all commit similar depredations.”
More so the demise of the Carolina parakeet was their concern for the welfare of others: “Should a person shoot at them, as they go, and wound an individual, its cries are sufficient to bring back the whole flock, when the sportsman may kill as many as he pleases.” One discharge could bring down as many as “eight or ten, or even twenty.” Audubon occasionally encountered a Carolina parakeet with fourteen tail feathers, like the one that figures prominently at the top of one of the most treasured prints in Birds of America. The last Carolina parakeet died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.