It is a curious fact that several of the early writers assert that the parakeet was a common bird in Virginia when it was first settled. Hamor mentions that he had observed many parakeets in winter in the new country, a statement which Strachey confirms by declaring that flocks of them made their appearance in the early part of December. He had frequent opportunities of examining their plumage after killing them, which it was difficult to do, as they were very swift in their flight. He describes the wings of this bird as being of a greenish color, the head varied in tint, being either yellow, crimson, orange, or tawny, but in either instance extremely beautiful. The tail was forked. These are the physical features of the ordinary parakeet. If this bird was found in Virginia when it was first explored, of which from this description, it seems, there can be no doubt, it now has entirely disappeared, an assertion that cannot be made concerning the other species to which the earliest observers have left references. There is no modern bird with which the parakeet of Hamor and Strachey can be identified; there is none that even approaches it in the general character of its plumage.[1]
Of the numerous varieties of the woodpecker, one was as large in size as the English magpie, having a scarlet
- ↑ “Some of our Colonie who have scene of the East Indian Parrotts affirme how they are like to that kynde, which hath given us somewhat the more hope of the nerenes of the South Sea, these parrotts by all probability like enough to come from some of the countrys upon that sea.” Strachey’s History of Travaile into Virginia, p. 126. For further reference to the Virginian parrot, see letter of Francis Perkins, dated 1608, Jamestown, in Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 175; Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 60; New Description of Virginia, p. 15, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. II. This parrot was doubtless the Psittacus Caroliniensis. It must have disappeared from Virginia before the close of the century, as neither Glover nor Clayton, both unusually observant men, make any reference to its presence.
