Colorado’s state flower, tree, and animal recall its majestic mountains. But its state bird reminds us of its eastern grasslands. It was one of just eight birds illustrated with a full-page plate in the book Birds of the Rockies, published in 1902.
Few state birds were more hotly contested than Colorado’s. A teacher from Fort Collins named Roy M. Langdon suggested the lark bunting, or “western bob-o-link.” He said the lark bunting is conspicuous, numerous, distinctive and typical of Colorado, useful, beautiful, and sings an inspiring song. He also noted that pictures of the bird could be printed cheaply. (In summer, males are black with snowy white wing patches and edgings, tail coverts and outer tail feathers.) Langdon’s choice was recommended at a meeting of northeastern Colorado chambers of commerce in 1928.
The Competition
Superintendent of Public Instruction Katherine Craig started another campaign, with the robin, mountain bluebird, “long-crested jay” (Steller’s jay), and western meadowlark as candidates. The western meadowlark won. The mountain bluebird won in still another campaign sponsored by the Denver Post, along with the Colorado Mountain Club and the Colorado Federation of Women’s Clubs.
Langdon, who was now president of the Colorado Audubon Society, noted that the western meadowlark and mountain bluebird already represented other states. Perhaps this is what persuaded lawmakers. The Governor signed a bill making the lark bunting Colorado’s official bird on April 29, 1931.
Prairie Finches
The lark bunting was first seen by naturalists along the Platte River in what is now Nebraska in 1834. (The Platte begins in Colorado.) The famous botanist Thomas Nuttall, and his young assistant, John Kirk Townsend encountered large flocks of the unfamiliar birds. The drab brown females perched quietly on the ground or on low bushes.
But the males put on a show for the explorers. They sang as they flew high into the air. As one writer describes it, they “then drop earthward, their wings cutting dark ‘V’ patterns against the blue of the prairie skies.”
Townsend’s “prairie finches” have since been called the dark-helmeted reed-finch, the prairie bobolink, the white-winged blackbird, and the white-winged prairiebird. But today most people know it as the lark bunting, or as Colorado’s state bird.
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