Is your state bird a stupid state bird?

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by KillarneyRose

Maryland's state bird is the Baltimore Oriole. Not sure if the baseball team was named after the state bird or vice versa.

The team, which relocated to Baltimore from St. Louis in 1954 (the St. Louis Browns) was named for the state bird.

Originally Posted by AGDee

I don't like his suggestion for Michigan (One of the many American Robin states) because it should be a bird that people who live in the state see frequently, IMO. He wants some rare bird that I've never heard of after living here my whole life and which is almost extinct. What happens when your state bird disappears off the planet? Don't you need a new bird then?

Originally Posted by Psi U MC Vito

He is looking at it from the view of an expert birder, not the average Joe. That being said, he does have a point of the need for distinctness.

Input from a cardinal state: In lots of instances in the first half of the 20th Century, when many of the more basic state symbols were adopted, legislatures had school children vote on what should be made the state bird, flower or tree. At least, that's how it worked here for those things, and that explains some of the more . . . pedestrian . . . choices.

Personally, I never saw the point in every state having an official state bird. If there is a bird that has a natural association with a state or conveys a natural symbolism, then great. (Pelicans and Louisiana or Orioles and Maryland come to mind.) But if there's not, why adopt one just for the sake of having a state bird? Use other symbols that have a more natural association.