A Minnesota man’s mission is to (finally) make the bald eagle the United States’ national bird
WABASHA, Minn. – You might be forgiven for thinking it’s not necessary, but the bald eagle is one step closer to being named the United States’ national bird.
Late on a Monday evening in July, after most senators had already gone home, the Senate unanimously approved a proposal to include the official national classification of birds in U.S. law.
“Without objection, it is that,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said after Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., moved to pass the bill without anyone else in the chamber.
Just like that, he was off to the house.
US law already designates the oak as the national tree of the United States and the rose as the national flower, and Congress even voted in 2016 to designate the bison as the national mammal, but the bald eagle is not the national bird of the United States. – Until now.
Thanks to a man who discovered this oversight, Congress is about to correct that. The House passed the bill Monday night, sending it to President Joe Biden to sign it into law and formalizing the national significance of the bald eagle in one of the last acts of Congress this year.
“Priest Eagle”
The bald eagle is a special passion in Wabasha, Minnesota, where the National Eagle Center is located on the banks of the Mississippi River. The city, which calls itself the “Eagle Capital of America,” has a population of about 1,500, including one person who has dedicated his life to the legacy of the bald eagle.
Preston Cook is, to put it mildly, obsessed with bald eagles.
“I saw a movie called ‘A Thousand Clowns’ in 1966, and there was one line in the movie, ‘You can never have too many vultures,'” Cook said. “I came out of the theater and said it might be interesting to collect it.”

So he started collecting, collecting, collecting. Over the decades, Cook’s collection has swelled to more than 40,000 items, believed to be the largest in the country.
“If it had an eagle on it, I would have bought it,” Cook said. “I may have gotten a little carried away with my collection here, but I loved the whole process.”
The collection is housed in two warehouses just steps from the Mississippi River and ranges from political pins to plaques and magazine covers to playing cards. There are Lego sets and sculptures, ginger beer bottles, and eagle-glamorous high-heeled shoes.

The collection became so large that Cook began looking for a place to put it. It found a home at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha.
He also decided to turn his collection into a book, and while researching the eagle’s place in American history, he came to a realization.
“We’ve never had a national bird,” Cook said.
Türkiye legend
The omission came as a shock to staff at the National Eagle Center, who thought the honor had already been given to the bird that nests in the trees surrounding their headquarters. Minnesota has the second largest nesting population of bald eagles in the country, behind only Alaska.
“Preston Cook brought this up to us years ago, and it was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re kidding me,’” said Scott Mehus, director of education at the National Eagle Center. “I’ve been speaking in classrooms all these years, and he told me [people] “It is a symbol of our nation and our national bird.”
“I’ve been wrong all these years, and so has everyone else in the country,” Mihus said.
The bald eagle became the country’s most prominent bird when it was placed on the Great Seal shortly after the country’s founding. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, who were originally put in charge, were unable to agree on a seal that represented the country, so in 1782, Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thompson submitted a version with the bald eagle, which was approved later that year . The eagle-embellished seal was first used in a document allowing George Washington to negotiate the exchange of prisoners of war and has become a national symbol ever since.

But not all of the Founding Fathers were fans of the eagle. Franklin wrote in a famous letter to his daughter that he wished the eagle had not been chosen to represent the United States, describing it as “a bird of bad moral character,” and adding: “It does not earn its living honestly.”
Franklin went on to say in his letter that “the turkey is by comparison a more esteemed bird, a true native of America.”
But it is a legend that Franklin led discussions about making the turkey the national bird; Historians believe he was joking. “He never advocated for the turkey to be our great seal,” Scott said, though he acknowledged that Franklin had made some negative comments about the eagle.

Invoice
“This is one of those few laws that won’t make any difference,” Cook joked.
The bill that Cook himself initially wrote and sent to Congress had no money attached to it; It doesn’t even help conservation efforts related to bald eagles. It simply places a line in US law between the national tree and the inauguration guidelines that says: “The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is the national bird.”
The bill was sent to the desks of Minnesota lawmakers in both chambers of Congress, and a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., brought it to the floor for unanimous passage in the upper chamber.

“They’re the ones who came to us and said it’s not the national bird,” Klobuchar said of the National Eagle Center and Cook. “So that was the motivation.”
It requires a resolution of Congress and the signature of the President to designate any item with the title “National.” The rose received this honor in 1986 and the oak tree in 2004.
“Nobody should change anything; it’s just a correction. It’s just a correction of history to make things right and make things the way they should be,” Cook said. “It was one of those little pieces of history that I felt should be taken care of.” And that’s what we do.”
The jacket
Cook doesn’t literally wear his passion for the Eagles on his sleeve, but he comes close. He wears an eagle-embroidered tie and an eagle pin on his lapel, and eagles even fly on his red, white and blue suspenders.
When you ask him about his most prized Eagle possession, he points to the buttons he got when he was drafted into the Army in the 1960s, which are now sewn onto the blue jacket he wears so often.
“I was given these buttons on my uniform with the big seal on them. Two years later, I went out and cut the buttons for my uniform, and I’ve been wearing them ever since.” “These are the first items in my collection, and that gave me the start of collecting eagles for the rest of my life.”

Looking at tables covered with old magazine covers showing cartoons of eagles flying away with little children in their talons, he admits that he has never stopped collecting objects, calling them a “work collection.” He rotates items among the displays for children and interested visitors to view at the National Eagle Center, but he jokes: “Don’t tell my wife I’m still collecting stuff.”
“My wife has been very tolerant, and I appreciate her for that,” he said. “Sometimes, you’ll say, ‘You’ve got too many Eagles.’ Sometimes, you’ll say that.”
But just like legislation, marriage is about compromise, and even the Cook family has its limits.
“She says, ‘You can put it wherever you want in the house, but you can’t put it in the bedroom.'” “I said, ‘Okay, I can live with this person,'” Cook said with a laugh.