I remember, as a grade school pupil in Madison, Wisconsin, voting for the state tree. That was in the late 1940's. Our class settled on the White Pine. But we were out-voted statewide, with the Sugar Maple coming out the winner. That was an early exercise in civics, I guess.

Phil Hotlen
Bellingham, WA
--------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Brown" <borealis at seanet.com>
To: "Barry Ulman" <ubarry at qwest.net>
Cc: tweeters at u.washington.edu, Pterodroma at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 8, 2011 8:40:59 PM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Re: State Bird -- Varied Thrush!

Interesting perspective. I'm a public elementary teacher and you make a
very good point. Of course, school children can be taught about options
available and which ones are special to our state, but that likely gets
overlooked to focus on the civics aspect.
Barry Ulman wrote:
> I think the reason why the Goldfinch is Washington's state bird, and
> why Goldfinch, Robin, Cardinal, etc. appear so frequently as state
> birds is that they were chosen by kids. I believe that state
> governments went to the schools to get votes from the students on what
> should be their state bird(s). Therefore, we have our commonest and
> most conspicuous species elected. Now if the state governments went to
> the birders instead to determine state birds (my choice), we'd
> probably have much more interesting and representative species chosen
> for each state.
>
> Barry Ulman
> Bellingham, WA.
>
>
>
> n Feb 8, 2011, at 5:43 AM, Pterodroma at aol.com
> <mailto:Pterodroma at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> _Varied Thrush_! I will whole heartedly second that! Great choice
>> and perfect not to mention one of my most favorite North American
>> birds! In addition, one of the reasons (of several) I chose to live
>> here at all in Washington and the Pacific Northwest.
>>
>> The whole goldfinch thing has always struck me as just plain weird.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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>


--
Michael Brown
Puyallup, Washington

"...I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"

-Aldo Leopold, " A Sand County Almanac"


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