Wanted: An Icon Worth Looking Up To

Canada already has a national tree, two national animals and two national sports. Two years ago, the Royal Canadian Geographic Society decided that Canada needed a national bird, too.

The society set up an online poll. Prominent writers lobbied for their choice in Canadian Geographic, the society’s magazine. There was even a debate in September.

In November, a panel of experts declared the winner: the gray jay. Found in all 13 of Canada’s provinces and territories, the bird stays in the frigid woods all winter, is monogamous and seems to like landing on people’s clothing or hands in the hope of a snack.

“You’ve got loyal, you’ve got friendly, you’ve got smart, you’ve got hearty: That’s what Canadians think we are,” David Bird, a professor emeritus at McGill University in Montreal and the bird’s booster in the debate, explained to The Times’s Ian Austen.

What the bird doesn’t have is name recognition. In the online poll where 50,000 voted, the gray jay finished third.

Canadian officials were cool to the idea as well. “At this time, the government of Canada is not actively considering proposals to adopt a bird as a national symbol,” Pierre- Olivier Herbert, the press secretary for the heritage minister, told Mr. Austen.

But there are other Canadian birds to consider.

Take the murre, a small bird described as looking like a flying penguin by The Times’s Craig S. Smith. It has a history as a staple food for residents of the province of Newfoundland, where it is called the turr, and is the deepest- diving flying bird in the world, capable of plummeting more than 180 meters into frigid waters.

The meat, Mr. Smith said, is dark and oily with a fishy aftertaste. It is also tough. But Newfoundlanders have a popular retort for those who complain: “It’d be a lot tougher if there was nothing to eat.”

For inspiration, Canadians could look abroad at two birds that are helping to advance science, and looking fashionable while doing it.

Take Obi, a Pacific parrot at Stanford University in California who flies through laser beams wearing specially fitted goggles. Obi is the star of an experiment conducted by Eric Gutierrez, a graduate student studying bird flight.

Obi doesn’t just look good; he’s also challenging theories of bird flight, Mr. Gutierrez told James Gorman of The Times. Results from Obi’s flights did not match conventional mathematical methods for calculating lift, and researchers will now have to conduct more experiments to get a better picture of flapping-wing flight.

Obi isn’t the only bird accessoriz- ing. There’s also Figaro, a Goffin’s cockatoo at the Veterinary University of Vienna.

Researchers watched as Figaro used a piece of bamboo to drag a pebble that had fallen out of his aviary toward him. Impressed, they replaced the pebble with a cashew nut and watched as Figaro bit a splinter from a wooden beam and used it to pull the cashew to him, The Times reported.

Cockatoos don’t do anything like this in nature. So Alice M.I. Auersperg, a researcher at the university, introduced him to other cockatoos in the lab who were able to learn tool use by watching Figaro in action.

If Canadians ever reopen debate on a national bird, perhaps they will find one whose exploits match those of Figaro and Obi. But for now, Professor Bird is relieved that another bird associated with Canada was never a contender.

“Canada goose? Over my dead body,” he said. “They’re basically pooping machines, and they’re obnoxious.”