If you think Canada’s national bird is the Canada goose or the common loon — those are common misconceptions — you are not alone, but you are wrong. Canada doesn’t have a national bird.
The U.S. has its bald eagle, the most famous national bird. Paraguay has the bare-throated bellbird, Belize honours the keel-billed toucan, Nicaragua celebrates the turquoise-browed motmot, Angola has its red-crested turaco and Bahrain chose the Himalayan bulbul.
But Canada, with more than 450 species of birds across its wide expanses, has not designated an official bird.
The Canadian Geographic Society is trying to change that, hoping to have a national bird designated in time for the country’s 150th anniversary in 2017. The society is offering Canadians the opportunity to vote for their favourite bird online and so far, the common loon is leading.
Choosing a national bird through a popularity contest concerns David M. Bird, emeritus professor of ornithology from Montreal’s McGill University and now living in North Saanich.
As an ornithologist named Bird, he has heard all the jokes.
“I get a kick out of people making a joke about it,” he said, “but I tell people it was just dumb luck.”
In the early 2000s, Bird was involved in an effort to select an official bird for Montreal, and he favoured the peregrine falcon, which had made a notable comeback in that city.
“It could have been a great bird for Montreal,” he said. “It’s a cosmopolitan bird and the fastest bird in the world.”
But democracy prevailed.
“They let the kids vote and they chose the American goldfinch because it was the prettiest bird,” Bird said.
In a similar process, Vancouver chose the black-capped chickadee as its official bird, “another democratic decision that did not make any sense among Canadian ornithologists.”
Bird is leading the campaign to have the gray jay — sitting at third on Canadian Geographic’s list, after the loon and the snowy owl — designated the official bird. He lists 15 reasons in favour of the gray jay, including:
• It is found in all provinces and territories, but is barely found in the U.S.
• As a member of the corvid family (crows and jays), it is one of the smartest birds on the planet.
• It is extremely friendly toward humans, like most Canadians.
• It’s hardy, having adapted well to very cold regions, and it stays in Canada all year.
• It figures strongly in First Nations folklore — it is also called the whiskey jack, likely a derivation of its Cree name wesakachak.
Bird has recruited one of Vancouver Island’s most prominent birders to the gray jay cause, the also aptly named Anne Nightingale, co-president of the Rocky Point Bird Observatory and past-president of the Victoria Natural History Society.
Bird has no personal prejudices against other birds being considered, but says they are unsuitable for various reasons. The common loon (“Do we want a national bird with ‘common’ in its name?”) spends two-thirds of the year in the U.S. Besides, it is the official bird of Ontario.
The snowy owl is exquisitely beautiful, but it’s Quebec’s official bird. Choosing one or the other would set those provinces against each other, if either even agreed to giving up its official bird.
He shudders at the thought of choosing the Canada goose, calling it an excrement machine.
Guy Monty, prominent Vancouver Island birder and wildlife consultant, favours the Eskimo curlew.
“It migrated north through the prairies in the spring, nested in the Canadian Arctic, and flew south through Newfoundland and Labrador in the fall on its way to South America,” he said.
Hunted to extinction, the Eskimo curlew as a national symbol would be a reminder of Canadians’ needs “as our government gives corporations unfettered power to destroy the ecosystems which sustain us.”
I favour the gray jay, but oh, that drab name!
That could change. Fifty years ago, the gray jay was known as the Canada jay (its Latin name is Perisoreus canadensis) and Bird has launched an effort to get the American Ornithologists’ Union nomenclature committee to change it back.
You can contribute your two-bits’ worth to the discussion by going to canadiangeographic.ca/nationalbird/ and voting.
