Though the Great Seal of the United States prominently features the bird of prey, the nation has never had an official bird throughout 248-year existence.
After President Joe Biden signed a measure Tuesday officially designating the predator as the national bird, the bald eagle has landed in U.S. code.
Congress approved the bill unanimously.
Though the Great Seal of the United States centers the bird of prey, it was never legally identified as the national bird. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson among the Founding Fathers were assigned to design a national seal but simply couldn’t agree.
Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson turned forth a bald eagle-based seal variant in 1782 and had it accepted. Most Americans know the seal’s eagle bearing a flag-emblazoned shield with olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other.
Historically opposed to the choice, Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter claiming the bald eagle was “a bird of bad moral character.”
Either way, in the roughly 250 years since its inception, the United States has not had an official bird.
Even drafting a draft a bill and forwarding it to legislators, Minnesota citizen Preston Cook has long dreamed the eagle will climb into the U.S. code.
Cook said he had a lifetime passion for the bald eagle and set out to advocate a change when he found no official American bird. He penned a basic piece of legislation altering the code to state, “The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is the national bird.”
Later, D-Minn. Sen. Amy Klobuchar oversaw a bipartisan committee that presented it to the Senate in July. It passed unanimously before last week’s sailing over the House free from resistance.
“The bald eagle is a symbol of our country’s freedom and strength and with our legislation now signed into law, the bald eagle is officially our national bird,” Klobuchar said on Thursday.
Cook told NBC News earlier this month that he felt driven to correct one neglected historical item.
“This is only a correction; nobody has to modify anything. Cook added, “It is only a correction in history to make things right and makes things the way they should be.”
