THICK-BILLED PARROTS released & raised in the wilds of Arizona

Abstract

One of only two species of psittacines
native to the continental United
States, thick-billed parrots (Rhynchopsitta
pachyrhyncha) effectively
disappeared from here early in the
1900s. They still persist, though in
dwindling numbers, in the Sierra
Madre of western Mexico. The causes
of their disappearance from the
northerly parts of their range are not
surely known. They were never intensively
studied while occurring north
of the border.
Recently we interviewed elderly
Arizonans who were personally familiar
with thick-billed parrots in those
by-gone decades. Our conversations
indicate a primary cause of their disappearance
may have been shooting
by subsistence-hunting miners and
woodsmen. They may also have suffered
from extensive cutting of the
mountain forests to support the mining
industry. Subsistence-hunting is
not widely practiced in southeastern
Arizona at the present time (and not
at all for parrots), and timbering is no
longer a major activity there.
There are no historical breeding
records for thick-billed parrots north
of Mexico. However, such records are
also virtually nonex istent for Mexico
itself for the period when thick-bills
occurred in the United States. Thus it
seems quite likely the absence of
breeding records is merely an observational
artifact. None of the early
naturalists visiting Arizona-New
Mexico is known either to have seen
thick-bills or to have made efforts to
locate their nests. In fact, most information
on thick-bills in the wild has
come from incidental observations of
ranchers, lumbermen and casual naturalists.
This is hardly adequate to 

prove what this species' breeding
status may have been anywhere.