I have very strong opinions about this. The state birds are a panoply of suck and the states with cool birds should beat up the lame states and take their lunch money. This means any state which has a mockingbird, cardinal, meadowlark, or robin. Or bluebird aside from NV and ID, though I wish they picked unique ones, at least it’s not a dumb city bird.
Are there any state songs/anthems that are actually good?
Glad one state is doing it right. Kansas and Kentucky are decent enough I guess. West Virginia has 4(!) including the one you’d expect, even though Mr. Denver is apparently singing more about the western part of the state of Virginia.
Special shoutout to New Jersey for the rousing anthem, “None.”
I don’t mind states having cardinals or bluebirds, but each state bird should be unique. The first state that picked a popular bird should get to keep it, or else it could be decided by a birding competition by each state’s top birders. The others need to choose new ones.
Three state birds particularly suck. Two are frikkin chickens, the Delaware Blue Hen and the Rhode Island Red. South Dakota’s state bird, Ring-necked Pheasant, isn’t even native to North America, but was introduced so people could hunt it. If they were going to have a chicken-like bird, they could have something super cool like the Greater Prairie Chicken.
Other way round, actually. California Gulls breed and are found year-round around the Great Salt Lake. It is most common in California as a migrant, wintering along the sea coast, although some do breed in the state.
It’s not even their state bird, but might as well give the cardinal to Missouri.
I don’t mind South Dakota because it’s at least the first state I think about when I think about pheasants. Similarly, as cool as the mountain bluebird is (really a fun animal to watch), I would pick the Himalayan snowcock, which is not native as the name suggests, but is certainly unique.
On those grounds, Florida and California could pick some kind of parrot as their state bird.
Some NJ folks tried to get Born to Run their state song until people looked at the lyrics. The part about it being a death trap, and so on.