Florida’s State Bird Drama: Lawmakers Push to Ditch the Mockingbird for the Flamingo (Again!)

For nearly a century, the mockingbird has reigned supreme as the state bird of Florida, surviving multiple coup attempts by the Florida Legislature.

Once again, a lawmaker this year wants to dethrone the bird known for its lilting sounds. Islamorada Republican Rep. Jim Mooney’s bill would actually designate two birds in its place: the American Flamingo as the state bird and the Florida scrub jay as the state songbird.

Mooney, who filed a similar bill last year, could not be reached for comment.

As with past attempts, his bill will likely inspire much debate about which feathered species is most appropriate to represent the Sunshine State when the Legislature convenes for its regular spring session on March 4.

Being named the state bird won’t confer any added protection to the scrub jay, which is already protected as a threatened species, but it is still important as an entry point to talking about conservation, said Julie Wraithmell, executive director for Audubon Florida.

“Being a state bird is symbolic and meaningful and gets school children excited,” she said. “Generations of school children have been working on this as an exercise in civic engagement and democracy.”

A group of high school students from Seminole County mounted an effort to get the Legislature to replace the mockingbird with the Florida scrub-jay in 1999, and subsequent groups have continued the push with no luck.

Past arguments have gone like this: Mockingbirds, although lovely songbirds, are not unique to Florida and are the state birds of Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. The mockingbird’s range stretches from Nova Scotia to El Salvador and as far west as California.

Florida Adopted The Mockingbird As Its State Bird In 1927.

Former state Rep. Howard Futch of Indialantic, who died in 2003, attempted to replace it with the Florida scrub-jay in 1998 but got his wings clipped.

“I have never thought the mockingbird made sense,” former Republican State Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg said when he introduced his bill to rescind the mockingbird’s designation in 2021.

The threatened Florida scrub-jay is the only bird that lives exclusively in the Sunshine State, which Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, pointed out when she introduced her bill to make it the state bird a few years ago.

Developers have historically fought off past attempts to name it the state bird because they worried it would make it harder to develop land where the tiny, scrappy bird is found nesting.

The now-retired National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer fought for years to kill scrub-jay legislation, once saying the bird’s willingness to eat out of a person’s hand just proved it had a “welfare mentality” and arguing that it made no sense to designate it as the state bird since it would soon become extinct.

But unlike the mockingbird, which has a rich and varied voice, the scrub-jay has a song that can be most kindly described as non-musical. The Audubon Bird Guide describes its song as a flat, harsh shriek. Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website describes it as a scratchy weep, a harsh scold, a guttural growl and a long “shek-shek-shek” series.