HOBE SOUND, Fla. – The northern mockingbird has done it again.
Known for its ability to vocally mimic at least a dozen other species, the gray-and-white bird held off challenges for a fourth consecutive year in the Capitol to unseat it from its perch as Florida's state bird. Lawmakers this year even tried some new strategies.
Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Broward, devised what she believed was a “smarter, more nuanced approach” by filing a bill that would give school children the opportunity to pick their favorite bird at various summer camps over the next two years. Survey results would then be presented to the Senate president and the House speaker in December 2026.
Polsky said she believed involving children also would raise awareness about Florida’s birds. In 2008, when 78,000 children took part in a similar survey, they chose the American osprey, a brown and white hawk.
It didn’t fly.
Polsky’s bill never got far in the Senate. She unsuccessfully pushed for replacement of the mockingbird in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and said she was never optimistic that her latest proposal would succeed, either.
She believes state lawmakers don’t want to dethrone the mockingbird, which has held the state bird title for a century. She has previously sponsored bills to nominate the blue-and-gray Florida scrub jay, exclusively native to Florida, as the state bird.
The mockingbird has a stable population in Florida and is commonly found throughout the country. It’s also the state bird for four other states: Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.
On the House side, Rep. James Mooney Jr., R-Miami, proposed for the second year the bright pink flamingo become the state bird. He teamed it with the Florida scrub jay with the new title of state songbird.
His bill in the House also flopped.
Mooney envisioned the flamingo, the mascot of the Florida lottery, becoming a Florida branding tool. He said the bird evokes the state in the same way beaches, oranges and palm trees do.
“There’s nothing more iconic than seeing a flamingo in the wild,” Mooney said.
Spotting wild flamingos in Florida only recently became feasible. Only about 100 wild flamingos currently live in the state, according to a 2024 Audubon survey. They were swept into the state by Hurricane Idalia in 2023.
Once native to Florida, flamingos were driven to near extinction in the 1800s when they were hunted for their meat and feathers. Except for occasional sightings in southern Florida, the only stable flamingo populations were captive, like those at Hialeah’s race track, now called Hialeah Park Casino. The original flock was imported from Cuba in the 1930s.
There are no known wild flamingo breeding colonies in Florida, but the Florida Flamingo Working Group, a coalition of scientists focused on Florida flamingo conservation, is working on plans to remedy that issue.
Ruscena Wiederholt, a member of the group, said that once breeding colonies are established the birds would “help bring in tourism and boost the economy.” The birds are much more likely to breed when in flocks ranging from 40 to 100 in number, according to a 2023 Zoo Biology study. The group is still in its planning phase, but may build fake flamingo nests – muddy mounds on the ground – to trick nearby flamingos into thinking they’re in a bigger flock.
Naming the flamingo the state bird would have been “just ridiculous” given how few live in Florida, said Gregg Klowden, an avid “birder” and biology professor at the University of Central Florida.
Klowden prefers crowning the scrub jay state bird. The scrub jay lives in the state’s sandy patches of shrubs known as sand pine scrub. He also said the scrub jays represent “family values.”
“They live in family groups that are tightly knit, where the young stick around for one, two or three years with the parents,” Klowden said. “That’s rare among birds, overall.”
Florida’s scrub jay population has been falling as housing development destroys their habitats. Michael Chiarelli said he commonly sees displaced scrub jays at the Royal St. Cloud Golf Links. He said development has pushed them out of Orlando.
The scrub jay’s closest chance to becoming the state bird came in 2000, when a bill championing it failed in a second committee vote. Every scrub jay bill since has died before ever being subject to a vote.
Florida birders seem to be fans of the scrub jay.
Every month dozens of campers and birders equipped with binoculars and cameras follow Jim Howe, a self-proclaimed nature nerd, on “scrub jay walks” through 10,500-acre Jonathan Dickinson State Park. Both the scrub jay and mockingbird were spotted on tree branches before flying off to avoid approaching humans. On the wide, sandy trails of the park, it’s easy to see ample of both birds.
Jane Haas, a recent birder who joined Howe’s scrub jay walk earlier this year, said she loves the scrub jay for its intelligence. They can bury food and remember the hiding place and later return. Haas would support it for state bird if legislators pushed it again.
One scrub jay detractor is Marion Hammer, a former National Rifle Association president. She’s decried the scrub jay’s “welfare mentality” because of their willingness to eat out of human hands. In a Tallahassee Democrat column, Hammer also railed against their “irritating squawk,” which some birders concede makes the scrub jay a questionable pick for state songbird.
Hammer has said Florida should stick with the mockingbird. “The mockingbird is a well-established, independent, prolific bird that doesn’t need government protection or our tax dollars to survive,” she wrote in her column. Hammer, who told The Floridian she was retiring from the bird debate, couldn’t be reached for further comment.
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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporters can be reached at aidanbush@ufl.edu. You can donate to support our students here.