The National Bird

The story is that Ben Franklin wanted the turkey chosen as the national bird. His view was that unlike the eagle which goes around killing things in many countries, the turkey is unique to the New World. One does not know if Ben knew much about turkeys such as  their unique and individual personalities. While some turkeys attack motorcycles, others like Big Tom at Sheep Pasture, are friendly public figures.  Hunters know the turkey as a wily and sagacious bird, but that dumpy body shape just didn't reflect the can-do attitude that the Founding Fathers wanted to project. So in a spirit of compromise not seen among today's Foundering Fathers, the original FFs settled on the Bald Eagle. It had that eagle attitude but the white head made it uniquely American. If the FFs had vetted the Bald Eagle, that diet of fish and carrion might have been a deal breaker, but Mr. Audubon was a few years in the future. Over the first two hundred years Americans did their best to shoot and then poison the national symbol, but things are better now and you may actually see the Bald Eagle here in Easton.

Now, it's not may place to second guess the Founding Fathers, we have the Supreme Court for that, but it seems to me they missed a real marketing opportunity in not naming the bluebird as the national symbol. Like the flag, bluebirds are red, white, and blue. OK, more blue, red, and white, but still they're the right combination. Bluebirds are spectacular at eating bugs so its only a scale issue between them and real eagles knocking down bunnies. Unlike eagles and turkeys, bluebirds are colorful and charming something a more mature nation like ours today would want to promote especially if we could drop that "bombs bursting in air" thing for something more singable like "This Land is Your Land." The kicker is that the Bluebird is a true blue American put upon by those damned Immigrants, the starling and the house sparrow. That should make them a Tea Party favorite, and Bluebirds want to be left alone to catch bugs for their families and not have big government looking into their bird houses! Oh, wait a second, the Bluebirds at Sheep Pasture have been accepting handouts of mealy worms for years. Ah, that's it-Bluebirds: Too Big to Fail!

All joking aside the Bluebird is a wonderful bird brought back from threatened status by the concern of people like Bob Benson, an Easton resident who got a wonderful story in the Globe South section on Thursday. Easton resident Herb "Doc" Everett and Bob Hurd of Wild Birds Unlimited on Belmont Street were founders of our Bluebird Trail and have also been untiring supporters the little birds for years. We should also mention Chet Raymo who identified and wrote about a residual population of bluebirds at Sheep Pasture many years ago. That small population gave Bob Hurd and Doc Everett the idea for beginning the program that expanded the Bluebird population throughout Easton, Stoughton, and Norton.