State Bird: Longspur versus Meadowlark

Recently Matt Smith and Marc Devokaitis posted online "A Modest Proposal: Can EBird Help Choose Better State Birds?" They propose replacing the Western Meadowlark with the Thick-billed Longspur as the State Bird of Montana.

They propose the Thick-billed Longspur (Rhynchophanes mccownii) because sixty percent of the global population of Thick-billed Longspurs breed in Montana.

The Thick-billed Longspur also breeds in southern Canada and Wyoming, in wide open spaces. It migrates through Wyoming and Colorado, spilling over state borders along the way, and winters in Texas and Mexico. But over half the population breeds in Montana.

As the name suggests, this Longspur has a thick bill and, like other species of Longspurs, an elongated rear toe, the spur.

If you see a bird singing while parachuting down to earth, with its wings upstretched and its white tail feathers spread wide, that's probably a male thick-billed longspur. The aerial-song display is the way the species establishes and maintains it territory.

The bird likes open spaces, particularly shortgrass prairie habitat.

Buff and brown streaks on the back, and an inverted black T on the white tail, characterize this Longspur. A breeding male has a white face with black crown and black on the upper chest, plus a chestnut-colored patch on the wings. It's handsome.

The Thick-billed Longspur used to be called McCown's Longspur, named after John P. McCown who in addition to collecting birds fought as a Confederate general during the American Civil War. His defense of slavery provided cause for removing his name from the species, not that his political views had anything to do with his birding or vice versa, but his discriminatory behavior only hastened the renaming.

The renaming was part of an ongoing movement for Bird Names for Birds. It's a fact that birds named for people were usually named for white men. The naming generally failed to recognize indigenous people or people of color, or women of any discription, for their contributions to understanding birds. Thus the renaming campaign targets all birds named for people rather than just those birds named after people who discriminated against Black people.

But the status of the species, rather than the name, is the subject at hand. Should it be the state bird?

Montana's state bird has been the Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) since 1931 when the state's school children selected it by vote and the state legislature affirmed the selection, also by vote.

The Western Meadowlark sings a loud song, and it is easy to see due to its bright yellow and black streaked and spotted plumage. It is fond of open grasslands.

The Western Meadowlark is so popular that it is also the state bird of North Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon.

Smith and Devokaitis propose alternatives to the Meadowlark for those five states too: the Marsh Wren for North Dakota, the Black Rosy-Finch for Wyoming, the Lesser Prairie-Chicken for Kansas, the Greater Prairie-Chicken for Nebraska, and the Hermit Warbler for Oregon.

That would leave the Western Meadowlark without any state recognition.

How can that be fair?

Anne Millbrooke is a writer living in Bozeman.