Montana’s State Bird

When asked in 1930, which bird best represented Montana, the state’s school children responded overwhelmingly in favor of the Meadowlark. The next year, legislators made their choice official.

“With the bluebirds protesting from the trees on the capitol lawn outside his window, Governor Erickson today approved an act of the last legislature making the western meadowlark the State Bird of Montana.”

So read a newspaper dispatch from Helena on March 14, 1931. According to state bird proponent Katherine B. Tippetts, “This came as the result of a rousing State campaign led by Mrs. I.D. Hadzor, then conservation chairman of the State Federation. The robin, tree swallow and goldfinch were also active candidates.”

The meadowlark has ruled Montana ever since with no serious challengers. However, the black-billed magpie was once proposed as a replacement during a particularly tense period of the 1988 Legislative Assembly. Made in jest, the proposal was designed as an issue on which otherwise-partisan legislators could unite.

The magpie was selected because, unlike the meadowlark and many wealthy Montanans, it doesn’t leave the state during its harsh winters to seek refuge in the sunny south. Rather, it sticks it out with Montanans who are too poor to leave or who are legislators, bound to remain in Helena during January-April of the legislative-session years.

But Big Sky Country residents obviously prefer to listen to meadowlarks, not magpies.

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