Why Is the Bald Eagle the National Bird? The Real History

The short answer: a native eagle for a new nation

The founders wanted symbols that marked the United States as a new and independent republic. Eagles had represented power and authority since ancient Rome, whose legions carried eagle standards, and many European states used eagles in their coats of arms. The new nation wanted that tradition, but in its own form.

The bald eagle solved the problem neatly. It is a large, impressive eagle that lives only in North America, so it was both a classic emblem of strength and something no European power could claim. Its striking white head also made it instantly recognizable on a seal or coin.

How the bald eagle got onto the Great Seal

On July 4, 1776, the same day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, Congress asked Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to design a seal. Their proposal did not include an eagle and was not accepted. A second committee in 1780 also failed to produce a design Congress liked.

A third committee in 1782 brought in William Barton, a young Philadelphia expert in heraldry, whose design included a small eagle. Congress then handed the task to its secretary, Charles Thomson. Thomson moved the eagle to the center, made it large and specified that it should be the “American” bald eagle. Congress adopted his design on June 20, 1782.

On the seal, the eagle carries a shield of 13 stripes on its chest. In one talon it holds an olive branch with 13 leaves, and in the other a bundle of 13 arrows, standing for peace and the readiness for war, with 13 for the original states. In its beak is a scroll reading E pluribus unum, “out of many, one”. The eagle faces the olive branch, a choice usually read as a preference for peace.

What Benjamin Franklin really said about the turkey

A popular story says Franklin wanted the wild turkey as the national bird. That is not true. Franklin never proposed the turkey for the Great Seal, and his own committee’s design had no bird at all.

The legend comes from a private letter Franklin wrote to his daughter, Sarah Bache, in January 1784, from France. He was mocking the Society of the Cincinnati, a hereditary club of army officers, whose new eagle badge he thought looked more like a turkey. In the letter he complained that the bald eagle was a bird of “bad moral character” because it steals fish from ospreys, and joked that the turkey was a more respectable bird and a true native of America.

Franklin was writing as a satirist, and the comparison was mainly a dig at the Society. He did, however, get the biology half right: bald eagles really do steal food from other birds, a habit described in what do bald eagles eat?.

The 2024 law that made it official

Surprisingly, for 242 years no law formally named the bald eagle the national bird. It was the national emblem on the Great Seal, protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, and printed on coins, passports and government logos, but the title “national bird” was simply customary.

That changed in 2024. Supporters led by the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minnesota, and Minnesota members of Congress pushed a bill to fix the gap. Congress passed it in December 2024, and the president signed it into law later that month. The law states plainly that the bald eagle is the national bird of the United States. It joined the American bison, which Congress named the national mammal in 2016.

Why the bald eagle still fits the role

The bald eagle’s story since 1782 has made it an even stronger symbol. By the 1960s, shooting, habitat loss and the pesticide DDT had cut the population in the lower 48 states to only a few hundred known nesting pairs. Protection under federal law and the 1972 ban on DDT allowed a dramatic recovery, and the species was removed from the endangered list in 2007. You can follow that comeback in how did the bald eagle recover?.

The bird is also deeply important to many Native American nations, for whom bald and golden eagles are sacred messengers and eagle feathers are used in ceremonies and as marks of honor. Federal law reflects this: enrolled members of federally recognized tribes can receive eagle feathers and parts for religious use through the National Eagle Repository, while it remains illegal for others to possess them.

Eagles as national symbols elsewhere

The United States is not alone. Eagles feature in the coats of arms or flags of many countries, including Germany, Austria, Poland, Albania, Egypt and Mexico, whose flag shows a golden eagle eating a snake on a cactus. The bald eagle itself appears in the coat of arms of the Philippines, a legacy of US rule.

For the official birds and animals of other countries in the Western Hemisphere, from Canada to Chile, see national animals of the Americas.