What is the Mississippi state bird?

Was the mockingbird almost on the Mississippi flag?

Twice it was proposed, and twice the bill died. In 2003 Representative Fleming's House Bill 821 would have redrawn the state flag as blue, white and red bars “with a mockingbird (the state bird), standing on a small branch.” Below it would have been magnolia blossoms, ringed by twenty silver stars for Mississippi as the 20th state.

The bill died in committee on February 4, 2003 (bill history). Fleming tried again with House Bill 460 in 2004, and it died on March 9, 2004.

Then the flag itself changed. In 2020 the Legislature retired the old state flag and required that the new design leave out the Confederate battle flag (H.B. 1796, approved by the governor on June 30, 2020). The flag that voters approved and the Legislature adopted in 2021 has a “stylized white magnolia blossom” inside a circle of twenty stars (H.B. 1, approved January 11, 2021): the magnolia and the stars of the 2003 bill, but no mockingbird.

How did the mockingbird become Mississippi's state bird?

The state's women's clubs and the Legislature chose it together in 1944, by the account of the Secretary of State's symbol sheet. That is all the official record says about the choice: it gives no vote count and no rival birds.

The law, Mississippi Code § 3-3-11 (Laws 1944, chapter 326, as an unofficial copy of the code gives it), keeps the old two-word spelling: “The bird commonly called the mocking bird is hereby designated the state bird.”

Mississippi has a second official bird. The State of Mississippi's symbols page lists the Wood Duck as its state waterfowl, designated in 1974, according to Mississippi State University Libraries. More Wood Duck paintings are on our Wood Duck painting page.

What did Audubon see in Natchez?

A mockingbird that came home. In the first volume of his Ornithological Biography (1831), Audubon wrote of a hand-raised mockingbird kept by a gentleman at Natchez. It would fly out of the house, and it “poured forth its melodies, and returned at sight of its keeper” (Audubon's text).

Audubon's own plate of the mockingbird, with a nest defended against a rattlesnake, is on our Northern Mockingbird painting page.

What happened to the state poem with the mockingbird in it?

Its bills died in committee. In 2000, S.B. 2097, by Senator Browning, and H.B. 1222, by Representative Montgomery, would have made Avis Corley Porter's poem “Mississippi” the state poem. One line of it counts the mockingbird states: “Four other states share the mockingbird.”

Both bills died on March 7, 2000 (S.B. 2097 history; H.B. 1222 history).

Where can you see a mockingbird in Mississippi?

Anywhere in the state. The Secretary of State calls the mockingbird a bird “found in all sections of Mississippi,” and Mississippi State University Libraries describe it as common in “open farmland, thickets, and even urban areas.”

What trick did Keulemans say mockingbirds play on dogs?

A confusing one. In Onze Vogels in Huis en Tuin (vol. 2, 1873), Keulemans passed on what other writers had reported: a mockingbird copies the whistle “waarmede de meester zijn hond roept,” “with which the master calls his dog” (our translation), and the dog goes off searching the woods for its master (the book on the Internet Archive).

It does the same in the farmyard, he wrote: it crows like a rooster and clucks like a hen, and leads the chicks astray.

Keulemans drew our plate from life, as its lettering says, “J. G. Keulemans ad nat.,” and it carries the name of its publisher, P. W. M. Trap (the plate).

Which other states share Mississippi's state bird?

Four, as the 2000 poem says: Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee and Texas. Florida and Texas chose the mockingbird in 1927 and Tennessee in 1933.

Arkansas's choice, in 1929, was also pushed by women's clubs, its General Federation of Women's Clubs (Old State House Museum).

Questions about the Mississippi state bird