Officially Recognizing our Fine Feathered Friends
Since 1782, the Bald Eagle has appeared on the Great Seal of the United States, has been seen on money of the realm and has generally been a symbol of the USA’s freedom, power and independence. After almost 250 years of being recognized, unofficially, as a symbol of America, in December 2024 President Biden signed into law legislation passed by Congress that finally, and officially, designates the bald eagle as the national bird of the United States.
That got us a wondering, how about New Jersey and Pennsylvania? Just what are their officially recognized birds and how did they come to be designated as such? A quick search of the inter-webs provides that the eastern goldfinch is the official state bird of New Jersey, while the ruffed grouse is in “the catbird seat” as the official bird of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
According to Nicholas Ciotola, Curator, at the New Jersey State Museum, in their video entitled Why is our State Bird our State Bird?, the eastern goldfinch had been featured on stationary, buttons and other ephemera of the New Jersey Audubon Society for some time early in the 1900s, and in 1935, Dryden Kuser, the son of the head of this Society, himself a New Jersey state senator, promoted the adoption of it as the state bird in legislation.
When he first floated his bill, in March 1935, it failed in dramatic fashion.
From an article entitled Goldfinch Gets ‘Bird,’ But Isn’t The Bird in the Altoona Tribune, March 13, 1935: “Prolonged and noisy whistling today defeated the eastern goldfinch’s chances of becoming the official bird of New Jersey. When Senator Dryden Kuser’s bill, designating the goldfinch as the official state bird, came up on the floor of the state senate, spectators and senators smothered in a chorus of whistles whatever good things Kuser might have been saying. When the whistling stopped and the roll was called, the goldfinch still needed four more votes to be anything but just another bird.”
The idea did, however, eventually take flight and was adopted in June that same year.
Pennsylvania’s adoption of the ruffed grouse, a game bird, as its state bird had a much easier time. “I think there is no gamer bird,” said the then Governor Pinchot in a letter suggesting its designation in The Morning Call, April 31, 1931 edition. “Whether we call it partridge or ruffed grouse or pheasant, as they do in the south, it is a splendid creature. One effect of the adoption of the creature would be to stimulate interest in its perpetuation. It is decreasing in numbers and, unless we act quickly, may soon be missing from its Pennsylvania range.”
The 1931 bill supported by Governor Pinchot winged its way through the state legislature without any real opposition.
