Illinois state bird: Groups consider new pecking order

[Donna]

 October 19, 2010

Illinois' state bird is, as any schoolkid ought to be able to tell you, the cardinal. Now, there's a movement by some Chicago-area birders to replace the cardinal with the red-headed woodpecker.

The groups Chicago Wilderness and the Audubon Chicago Region also raised that possibility, asking in a newsletter if anyone might like to "join in this perhaps quixotic quest." Numbers of the red-headed woodpecker -- a noisy bird with a brilliant red head on top of a black-and-white body -- have been steadily declining because of habitat loss, but the bird was once common throughout Illinois.

"Wouldn't it be nice if the state bird was simply more representative of what the state was like when it was founded?" said Bob Fisher, president of the Illinois Ornithological Society.