The Carolina parakeet was the only parrot native to the eastern United States, a brilliant green and yellow bird that had filled the forests from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. Hunting, feather collection, and habitat loss destroyed the population within decades. By the early 1900s only a small captive flock remained at the Cincinnati Zoo. One by one they died. Incas was the last, a male who had been inseparable from his companion Lady Jane until she died in 1917. After losing her he rapidly declined. He died on February 21, 1918, in the same cage at Cincinnati Zoo where Martha, the last passenger pigeon, had died just four years earlier. The zoo that had witnessed the end of two entire species within four years of each other noted both deaths with a single line in their records. Two species gone within four years, in the same building, and nobody thought either moment deserved more than a sentence.