Why is the loon Minnesota’s state bird? It almost didn’t happen.

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Minnesota’s state bird is everywhere: There are loons on license plates and library cards, at lottery counters, and now even on the official state seal.

Fireplace mantels across the state sport carved loons. The world’s largest loon, a steel sculpture with an 88-foot wing span, rises outside St. Paul’s Allianz Field where the Minnesota United FC team — otherwise known as the Loons — plays soccer.

There’s also a giant concrete loon in Vergas and a huge floating fiberglass loon in Virginia. An awful lot of Minnesotans were unhappy a loon didn’t end up on the new state flag.

Seraphine, a fifth-grader from St. Paul, likes loons too. She’s seen and heard them while canoeing with her family at Itasca State Park, and she’s learned a lot about the loon at summer camp. Except for one thing.

“They did not tell us why it was the state bird of Minnesota,” said the 10-year-old. “I really wanted to know the answer to that.”

So she put the question to Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project. It’s interesting, she said, how loons “have bright red eyes and they make such a weird sound.”

Seraphine, you’re on the right track. The Legislature named the common loon as Minnesota’s state bird in 1961 in large part because it’s so distinctive, with its white-spangled black plumage, long black bill and those Morocco red eyes. It’s a wilderness bird that lives on the water and emits a haunting wail.

And we’re unique among the states in choosing the loon. Thirty states share state birds, the most popular being the northern cardinal (the choice of seven states).

While picking the loon may seem like an obvious choice today, it almost didn’t happen.

It took lawmakers, ornithologists, women’s clubs and schoolchildren more than 30 years to sort through dozens of candidates.

Before state leaders finally settled on the great northern diver — as the common loon is also known — earlier bills championed several different birds, including the goldfinch, wood duck, pileated woodpecker and mourning dove.

Minnesota’s avian indecision led it to be one of the last states to select an official bird. Both Alaska and Hawaii became states a full century after us, but named their birds before we did.

With an estimated 12,000 to 13,000 adult loons, Minnesota has the largest common loon population among the Lower 48 states. (Canada, where the loon is Ontario’s provincial bird, claims 93% of the loon’s worldwide breeding population. )

Only Alaska, nearly eight times larger in size, has more common loons in the United States, said Kevin Kenow, a loon expert and retired scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

“It’s a very charismatic species, easily identifiable by sight and sound, and a symbol of northern wilderness lakes,” he said.

But back in the 1920s, when the General Federation of Women’s Clubs first came up with the idea of naming a state bird for every state, the loon was not in the running here. Minnesota’s club initially voted the robin as its favorite, followed by the meadowlark and the American goldfinch.

Some states took their Women’s Club nominations and flew ahead — Kentucky was the first to make it official in 1926 with the northern cardinal. In Minnesota, the process moved much more slowly.

In 1932, the Minnesota Federation of Women’s Clubs dropped the robin and instead chose the goldfinch as our unofficial state bird, ahead of the blue heron, the veery (a small thrush) and the white-throated sparrow.

Lawmakers considered a bill in 1947 to make the goldfinch official. It looked promising, until Rep. Louis Hill Jr. of St. Paul insisted (incorrectly, according to birders) that the yellow songbird didn’t winter north of Anoka.

In 1949, lawmakers took a big step toward designating an “avian emblem,” as it was called. Gov. Luther Youngdahl signed a bill establishing a commission of seven men to nominate state bird candidates. The commission put 20 birds before Minnesota schoolchildren for a vote.

The result was, to say the least, unexpected: the kids clamored for the scarlet tanager, no doubt owing to its bright red feathers.

The loon came in a distant fifth, behind the rose-breasted grosbeak, wood duck and mourning dove. When the Minneapolis Tribune’s Minnesota Poll asked adults their favorite, they chose the robin, followed by the scarlet tanager. Fewer than 1% favored the loon.

Many Minnesotans objected to the loon because it’s literally a snowbird; most of them winter in the Gulf of Mexico. Others noted that the loon was found mostly in central and northern Minnesota, and only rarely in the state’s southern and western sections.

Some thought the name of the bird was beneath the state’s dignity; it was too “loony,” they said.

But only a few months before the 1951 legislative session, the loon got a big boost from Robert Murphy, curator of birds at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Murphy, in Minneapolis for an ornithologist convention, told the Minneapolis Tribune that given Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, the loon “would be the ideal state bird.”

Legislators — quietly reneging on their promise to go with the kids’ choice — sponsored five bills featuring the loon, mourning dove, scarlet tanager, wood duck and pileated woodpecker as choices.

One Minneapolis lawmaker supported the woodpecker, telling a Tribune reporter it was the only one of the five that stayed in the state all winter and “doesn’t just come to Minnesota for a vacation.”

The loon legislation, backed by the University of Minnesota, passed the Senate but ran into resistance in the House. The other four bills died as well. Attempts made in the 1950s to gin up interest in the pileated woodpecker and red-winged blackbird went nowhere.

In 1961, lawmakers took up the loon again, with support from the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union. The bird scientists noted that the loon migrated throughout Minnesota, was easy to spot on a lake and — in a tip of the hat to marketing concerns — would reproduce well in promotional photos.

“Have you ever heard the wild cry of the loon across a lonesome lake of northern Minnesota at evening? You never forget it,” Dwain Warner, ornithology curator at the U’s Bell Museum of Natural History, told the St. Paul Dispatch.

Another advocate noted that loons can run on the water for a quarter-mile during courting season. “Show us a legislator who can do that,” he harrumphed.

Five House members — three liberals and two conservatives — introduced a loon bill in the 1961 session. One of the sponsors, Rep. Loren Rutter of Kinney, said in committee that many Minnesotans had written him to agree “that the loon typified the wilderness and the lake areas of our state.”

Rep. Reuben Wee of Balaton, a robin backer, challenged Rutter to “give us a demonstration of the call of the loon.”

Rutter demurred. “I am sorry but I cannot,” he sniffed, feathers slightly ruffled. “I am not a bird caller.”

Rep. Edward Barsness of Glenwood came to Rutter’s aid, saying the loon’s call had “a certain sweet sadness” that reminded him of an Irish tenor singing “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”

Later, on the House floor, Rutter gave colleagues a pointed stare as he noted the steadfast loon “mates for life.” (The birds are actually better described as serial monogamists, according to scientists.)

St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Gene Newhall found Rutter’s speech “thought-provoking, deeply funny, and probably an aid to passage of the bill.”

And so it happened: The House later approved the bill on an 88-25 vote and the Senate followed suit, 56 to 7. When Gov. Elmer L. Andersen signed the bill on March 13, 1961, Minnesota finally had its state bird.

“In this land of 10,000 lakes, what better bird could they select?” Earl Bergerud of St. Paul told the Minneapolis Tribune.

The Tribune’s Minnesota Poll found that 57% of Minnesotans approved of the loon as the state bird, the paper reported that April.

Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find many state residents in favor of any other bird, even as rising temperatures, toxic mercury levels and expanding lakefront development threaten the loon’s continued presence here.

The National Loon Center, launched in Crosslake, Minn., in 2017, is planning to move next year into an $18.5 million facility offering interactive exhibits on North America’s five loon species.

Jim Williams, a longtime writer and editor about birds who last fall concluded a 22-year run of birding columns for the Star Tribune, calls the loon “Minnesota’s totem.”

“They say something noteworthy about the state, about us,” Williams said. “They’re elegant birds with an unforgettable voice. They don’t look like any other bird you’ll see on the water and they don’t sound like any other bird.”

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