This started off innocently enough. It was mentioned to me at work that a
certain multi-media encyclopedia currently states that the state bird of Utah
is the Seagull. I was shocked, embarrassed and outraged all at the same time.
How could such a terrible mistake be made? Very easy, I was told by my
office-mates. Not everybody knows about birds, I was told. Thats not the
point, I protested, this information is easy to get. Why didn't they check
another source? To prove my point I went into another room where various
collections of encyclopedias are stored. I looked in five different sets of
encyclopedias (all 1995) and all five said that the seagull is the state bird
of utah. I went down to the library and found five more sources, including
the Columbia Concise Encyclopedia and the Random House Encyclopedia and they
all stated that the seagull is the state bird of utah. My amazement grew.
I talked to the fact-checker who is correcting this error. She told me that
she called up Utah and was forwarded to a "wildlife specialist". She asked
him what the state bird is, and he responded , the Seagull. (!) She asked him
what kind of seagull and he finally responded that he thought it was the
California Gull.

I'm really not sure what to make of all of this. I have talked to a lot of
people who have told me that they thought the seagull was a real species. But
I find it amazing that so many legitmate sources would get this simple fact
wrong. I wonder how many years they have been publishing this mistake.

Oh yeah, if you were to look up "seagull" in this particular multi-media
encyclopedia it would direct you to look under gull, where you will be told
that seagull is a misnomer.
The perils of dealing with information.


Jim Rosso
Issaquah
206-392-8440