Ask most Americans what the national bird is, and they’re likely to give you an immediate answer: the bald eagle, of course. Yet up until Christmas Eve, that answer would have been incorrect.
Although the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) has been a national emblem for well over two centuries, its status as the country’s national bird had never been made official. That changed on December 24, 2024, when President Joe Biden signed a bill recognizing the bald eagle as the official national bird into law.
Much of the credit for the bald eagle’s new status goes to Minnesota bald eagle memorabilia collector Preston Cook. Around 15 years ago, while researching bald eagles for a book, he discovered that the bald eagle had never been officially recognized as the national bird, despite its ubiquity and popularity. He also discovered that this lack of official status wasn't widely known, even among elected officials. To rectify this omission, Cook teamed up with the National Eagle Center to write a bill that was introduced to Congress last summer by a bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers.
Of course, even without official "national bird" status, the bald eagle has been featured on everything from military uniforms and flags to money and stamps. And long before the United States existed, the bald eagle was considered a sacred bird by numerous Native American cultures. Thousands of government agencies and departments prominently feature the bald eagle on their seals and logos.
Most notably, the bald eagle is central to the Great Seal of the United States, designed in 1782, where it appears holding an olive branch and arrows in its talons. However, it was not quite universally loved. Famously, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin was not a fan, even describing the bald eagle as a “bird of bad moral character,” though it seems apocryphal that he suggested the wild turkey should be the national symbol instead.
The triumphant return of the bald eagle:
- The bald eagle is indigenous to North America and can be spotted in every U.S. state except Hawaii. It's also native to Canada and northern Mexico. The states with the largest bald eagle populations are Alaska, Minnesota, and Florida.
- Bald eagles have been protected by federal law since 1940, when it became illegal to hunt, own, or sell bald eagles or tamper with their eggs or nests. Once so close to extinction that there were just 417 nesting pairs in the contiguous United States in the 1960s, bald eagle populations have gradually risen. One key turning point was the 1972 ban of the pesticide DDT (which was causing their eggs to have brittle and easily breakable shells), along with other protective measures. They were finally removed from the endangered species list in 2007.
- There are now approximately 316,700 bald eagles living in the lower 48 states, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Incredibly, their numbers had quadrupled between 2009 and 2020.
- The United States had already officially designated the oak as its national tree and the rose as the national flower. The bison became the national mammal in 2016.
- Every U.S. state has its own state bird, with the northern cardinal (7 states), western meadowlark (6 states), and the northern mockingbird (5 states) the most common. Some states also have a state game bird, raptor, or waterfowl.