Bird Law / State Birds
As a fellow amateur ornithologist I really enjoyed the mailbag letter about Utah’s state bird. The state songbird/gamebird/bird of prey categories are bad qualifiers. A state bird should simply be the endemic bird species that is most prevalent or associated with the state, there are hundreds of species to pick from that would eliminate doubles. Rhode Island’s state bird is a domestic chicken despite it being the “Ocean State” where Osprey and shorebirds are everywhere in the Summer and a whole list of rare sea ducks in the winter. A more suitable wild bird should be the obvious choice. The history of the chicken is neat but overlooks the natural avian residents that are actually interesting beyond colonial farming practices. Anyway I guess a whole episode settling bird law would be a lot of fun (for me)..