Yesterday, mudgirl saw a TV commercial featuring Snoopy and Woodstock. She said “Mom, I know Snoopy’s a beagle; but what kind of bird is Woodstock supposed to be?”
I tried looking it up on Wiki, and while Wiki was helpful in informing us that originally, Woodstock was a female character (because (s)he was intended as Snoopy’s ‘secretary’), there was no note on what type of bird it was.
Any ideas? Clues? Suggestion?
FWIW the Peanuts Wiki (Not the Wikipedia one, this is the Wiki that concentrates on Entertainment) reports that:
Since Woodstock is yellow, I always thought he was an canary that had gotten loose.
Wow. Very helpful. Thanks! 
mudgirl thought he was too “fluffy” to be a canary; she thought maybe some weird kind of baby ostrich. (Yeah, she’s quirky like that).
I always though he was a Canary, like Big Bird and Tweetie Pie.
Woodstock always wanted to be an eagle and soar above the clouds majestically, but he washed out of eagle camp for getting too many beak-bleeds. It was quite sad!
Alright, alright, Mickey’s a mouse, Donald’s a duck, Pluto’s a dog. What’s Goofy?
He’s also a dog. In fact, his original name was Dippy Dawg.
No, he’s a dawg, not a dog.
The one that gets me is that Gadget Hackwrench (a mouse) is about the same size as Chip and Dale (chipmunks). Donald Duck has appeared in various comics with Chip and Dale, and is about a dozen times their height. And Mickey Mouse is about the same size as Donald.
This is the kind of insanity we get when we try to analyze the classic 'toons too closely! 
I am going to try hard to convince my mudgirl not to be so literal! (Often, I’ll say something like “What am I going to do with you? I’ll have to sell you on eBay!” and she’ll furrow her brow and say “Really?” No, not really, you humorless geek-that-is-way-too-much-like-her-father!)
Sheesh. 
Because we all know there are no male secretaries?:rolleyes:
Actually, there was, originally, a whole flock of “woodstocks” that hung around the doghouse, until the one with the most individual character emerged and the flock kind of faded away after. So unless a whole bunch of canaries got loose, Woodstock’s probably not a canary.
Also, in the middle to later years of the strip, Snoopy was the leader of a “Bird Scout” troop, all of which looked like Woodstock.
I always assumed he was "boid’.
What kind of messed up radioactive canary is Big Bird?! One that spent too much down in the mine?
Exactly, which is why he scared the crap out of me when I was a tiny child.
I see someone’s not seen Stand by Me.
(The Bangkok Post still runs Peanuts.)
I always assumed he was a canary too.
The original flock of generic birds that hung around with Snoopy looked sort of like robins. Eventually Woodstock emerged as kind of a bird caricature of Snoopy himself.
Woodstock doesn’t look much like any native North American bird. About the only species that would be so completely yellow is the Yellow Warbler, but he otherwise doesn’t look anything like one.
