Lifestyle
The bald eagle isn't actually America's national bird — but that's poised to change
Bald eagles have symbolized America since 1782. But they’re not officially designated the national bird — yet.
Bruce Weaver/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Bruce Weaver/AFP via Getty Images
The bald eagle has been a symbol of the United States for centuries, with its iconography plastered across currency, documents, flags, stamps, government buildings, military uniforms and more.
You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s America’s national bird. But the fine print doesn’t officially say so — at least not yet.
On Monday, the House of Representatives passed a bill amending the U.S. Code to officially designate the bald eagle (aka Haliaeetus leucocephalus) as the country’s national bird.
The Senate already passed the bill, with bipartisan support, in July. Now it just needs President Biden’s signature to become the law of the land.
“Today, we rightfully recognize the bald eagle as our official national bird — bestowing an honor that is long overdue,” said Rep. Brad Finstad, the Minnesota Republican who introduced the House version of the bill earlier this year.
So why did the recognition take so long, and how did it finally become a reality? Americans have one dogged eagle enthusiast to thank.
How bald eagles became America’s unofficial bird
The presidential seal, like the logos of many federal institutions, stars a bald eagle.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Eagles have been used as a symbol of strength since ancient Rome, so it’s not surprising that they soared into American iconography too.
After the U.S.’ founding in 1776, three different committees tried unsuccessfully to come up with an official seal that would satisfy Congress.
Eventually, Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress, combined elements from all three proposals into what is now known as the Great Seal, featuring an eagle front and center, clasping an olive branch and arrows in its talons.
The original proposal depicted a small, white eagle. Thomson recommended it be replaced with a bald eagle, a species native to North America.
Congress adopted the design in 1782, cementing the bald eagle’s status as an American icon.
The species’ popularity has continued to soar ever since. In addition to its official appearances, the bald eagle can be seen today decorating all sorts of patriotic merchandise, serving as the mascot for hundreds of schools and even flying over major sporting events.
A Minnesota eagle enthusiast lobbied for their recognition
That’s why Preston Cook was shocked to learn that bald eagles aren’t technically America’s national bird.
Cook, 78, has devoted much of his life to studying and honoring the species.
“I saw a movie in 1966 called A Thousand Clowns, and it had one line in it: ‘You can’t have too many eagles,’” Cook told MPR News in November. “And that inspired me. So I left the movie theater thinking, ‘I want to collect eagles.’”
Over the decades he’s amassed more than 40,000 bald eagle items, from pins to paintings to playing cards, a collection that currently lives at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minn. (He doesn’t play favorites, but counts the eagle buttons issued to him on his military dress uniform in 1966 among the most meaningful.)
Around 2010, while doing research for a book about the birds, Cook realized he could not find “anything whatsoever that the bald eagle had ever been legislatively designated as our national bird nor any presidential proclamation,” as he told NPR’s All Things Considered this week.
Alarmed, Cook wrote a letter to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. She sent staffers to the National Archives, who did more research and ultimately confirmed his hunch.
The U.S. recognizes the rose as its national flower, the oak as its national tree and the bison as its national mammal. But nowhere does it legally establish a national bird.
Cook took it upon himself to change that. After years of lobbying lawmakers, he joined forces with the National Eagle Center last year to write what he calls “a very simple bill.” But getting lawmakers on board wasn’t easy, in part because so many figured bald eagles already held the distinction.
“It was a little bit of a challenge in the beginning because they wouldn’t believe me,” Cook said, adding that Feinstein’s letter helped. “So they did their research and came up with the same conclusion I came up with: It is not our national bird, and we don’t have a national bird.”
Bald eagles are a symbol of resilience in more ways than one
Bald eagles were endangered for many decades before federal protections led to their recovery. They were removed from the Endangered Species list in 2007.
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith were among the bipartisan co-sponsors of the Senate bill, and Minnesota Reps. Brad Finstad and Angie Craig introduced it in the House.
It makes sense that the proposed bill was popular in Minnesota, as the state has the second-highest number of bald eagles after Alaska, MPR News reports. As Klobuchar said in a statement, “we know a thing or two about eagles.”
An estimated 316,700 bald eagles populated the lower 48 states as of 2020, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which says that number had quadrupled since its last data set a decade earlier.
Bald eagles lived peacefully among Indigenous Americans (who consider them sacred) for generations and were abundant in the U.S. when they were chosen as the star of the seal in 1782. But their population has dwindled dangerously at times since.
For many decades they were considered an endangered species, largely due to “human ignorance and persecution by pesticides, careless shootings, car and powerline collisions and loss of habitat for nesting and foraging,” according to the National Audubon Society.
Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act in 1940, making it illegal to possess, kill or sell the birds. But in that decade, a new threat emerged: the insecticide DDT, which caused eggshells to thin and easily break.
By 1963, there were a record-low 417 nesting pairs in the lower 48.
But federal protections saved the species from near-extinction.
After the U.S. banned DDT in 1972 (and Canada the following year), the bald eagle population increased exponentially. By 2007, they were removed from the Endangered Species list and considered officially “recovered.”
Ed Hahn, the communications director at the National Eagle Center, hopes the bird’s legacy holds lessons for the management of other species, whether they are nationally recognized or not
“When we look at some of the issues that are facing other natural resources today, we can look again at our living national symbol and now our official national bird,” Hahn told MPR News. “It shows what we are able and willing to do when we truly value something, when it’s important to us.”
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
-
Augusta, GA5 minutes agoGaines endorses Kendrick in Augusta mayoral runoff
-
Washington, D.C12 minutes agoJuvenile injured after gunfire reported in DC’s Michigan Park neighborhood
-
Cleveland, OH15 minutes agoCleveland readies for pre-World Cup soccer match
-
Austin, TX20 minutes agoTexas lawmakers discuss rural hospitals
-
Alabama27 minutes agoAlabama has one of college football’s toughest schedule stretches in 2026
-
Alaska30 minutes agoFormer Alaska corrections officer sentenced to 150 years in prison for killing wife and teen daughter
-
Arizona35 minutes agoDozens charged under Preston’s Law in Arizona
-
Arkansas42 minutes agoStockton rappers plead guilty to possessing machine gun, marijuana in Arkansas traffic stop
