inducement for their frequenting the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi, where these plants are found in the greatest abundance. The seeds of the cypress-trees are another powerful attraction, while the abundance of the mast of the beech, on which it feeds freely, may explain their occasional visits to more northern regions, and even to places where they were before unknown.
In descending the Ohio in the month of February, Wilson met the first flock of Parakeets at the mouth of the Little Scioto. He was informed by an old inhabitant of Marietta that they were sometimes, though rarely, seen there. He afterwards observed flocks of them at the mouth of the Great and Little Miami, and in the neighborhood of the numerous creeks which discharge themselves into the Ohio. At Big Bone Lick, near the mouth of the Kentucky River, he met them in great numbers. They came screaming through the woods, about an hour after sunrise, to drink the salt water, of which, he says, they are remarkably fond.
Audubon, writing in 1842, speaks of the Parakeets as then very rapidly diminishing in number. In some regions where twenty-five years before they had been very plentiful, at that time scarcely any were to be seen. At one period, he adds, they could be procured as far up the tributary water of the Ohio as the Great Kanawha, the Scioto, the head of the Miami, the mouth of the Maumee at its junction with Lake Erie, and sometimes as far northeast as Lake Ontario. At the time of his writing very few were to be found higher than Cincinnati, and he estimated that along the Mississippi there was not half the number that had existed there fifteen years before.
According to Nuttall, this species constantly inhabits and breeds in the Southern States, and is so hardy as to make its appearance commonly, in the depth of winter, along the wooded banks of the Ohio, the interior of Alabama, and the banks of the Mississippi and Missouri, around St. Louis, and other places, when nearly all the other birds have migrated.
Its present habitat seems to be the Southern and Southwestern States, as far west as the Missouri. They occur high up that river, although none were seen or collected much farther west than its banks. In the enumeration of the localities from which the specimens in the Smithsonian collection were derived, Florida, Cairo, Ill., Fort Smith, Arkansas, Fort Riley, Kansas, Nebraska, and Bald Island, Missouri River, and Michigan are given.
In regard to the manner of nesting, breeding-habits, number of eggs in a nest, and the localities in which it breeds, I know nothing from my own personal observations, nor are writers generally better informed, with the single exception of Mr. Audubon. Wilson states that all his informants agreed that these birds breed in hollow trees. Several affirmed to him that they had seen their nests. Some described these as made with the use of no additional materials, others spoke of their employing certain substances to line the hollows they occupied. Some represented the eggs as white, others as speckled. One man assured him that in the hollow of a large beech-tree,
which he had cut down, he found the broken fragments of upwards of twenty Parakeet’s eggs, which he described as of a greenish-yellow color. He described the nest as formed of small twigs glued to each other and to the side of the tree in the manner of the Chimney-Swallow! From all these contradictory accounts Wilson was only able to gather, with certainty, that they build in companies and in hollow trees. The numerous dissections which he made in the months of March, April, May, and June led him to infer that they commence incubation late in spring or very early in summer.
Mr. Audubon, who speaks from his own observations, describes their nests, or the places in which they deposit their eggs, as simply the bottom of such cavities in trees as those to which they usually retire at night. Many females, he thinks, deposit their eggs together; and he expresses the opinion that the number of eggs which each individual lays is two, although he was not able absolutely to assure himself of this. He describes them as nearly round, and of a light greenish-white. An egg of this species from Louisiana is of a rounded oval shape, equally obtuse at either end, and of a uniform dull-white color. It measures 1.40 by 1.10 inches.
[1] Spizella pinetorum, Salvin, Pr. Z. S. 1863, p. 189. (“Similis S. pusillæ, ex Amer. Sept. et Mexico, sed coloribus clarioribus et rostro robustiore differt.”)
[2] Winter plumage. Rusty prevailing above, but hoary whitish edges to feathers still in strong contrast; streaks beneath with a rufous suffusion externally, but still with the black in excess.