The Carolina parakeet is something that's particularly sad to me. I have family in the coastal Carolinas and there's a certain historical continuity of culture

The Carolina parakeet is something that's particularly sad to me. I have family in the coastal Carolinas and there's a certain historical continuity of culture and natural history that extends from there to the caribbean. Many people in the area seem to migrate back and forth, there are fish and animals whose northernmost range is in the area and whose southernmost range is in the carribean, and there's many historical connections between the two (pirates, commodity trade, and so forth). Even hurricanes make their way from places in the carribean northward to the coast before they dissipate or hit land. The Carolina parakeet is kind of a ghost in this way, this animal that's conspicuous by its absence once you learn about it. It's easy to imagine one special, northern, cold-adapted species of parrot living on the American southeast-midatlantic coast, especially in the Carolinas, a kind of northern relative to birds living in the tropics, in the same way that so many other things are.