The Carolina parakeet was the only parrot breeding across the eastern United States, ranging as far north as New York and as far west as eastern Colorado. It fed heavily on the seeds of cocklebur and other plants, and on orchard fruit, which put it in conflict with farmers.
Contemporary accounts, including those of John James Audubon, describe flocks returning to hover over shot companions. Whatever its function in the wild, that response allowed shooters to kill birds in numbers from one spot. Persecution as an orchard pest was compounded by collection for the millinery trade, which valued the bright feathers, and by capture for the pet trade.
Habitat loss ran alongside. The bottomland hardwood forest the species nested and roosted in was cleared extensively through the nineteenth century. The last known captive, a male called Incas, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on 21 February 1918, in the same aviary complex that had housed the last passenger pigeon four years earlier. Credible wild reports continued into the 1920s.