Jesse Scheckner
Will 2026 be the year when lawmakers finally knock the common mockingbird of its perch as Florida’s official state bird and replace it with two avians far more closely associated with the Sunshine State?
Islamorada Republican Rep. Jim Mooney hopes so. He just refiled legislation (HB 11) to make the change, establishing the American flamingo as Florida’s state bird and the blue-and-gray scrub-jay as the state’s official songbird.
It’s about more than different feathers on a crest, Mooney said, noting that both the scrub-jay, Florida’s only exclusively native bird species, and the flamingo are emblematic of the state’s recovering ecosystem and how important it is to keep it healthy.
“It’s an environmental bill for me. It’s directly showing the results of Everglades restoration,” he said.
“Why are they back and hanging out? Because the food sources are better in the Florida Bay. As a kid, I always saw flamingos here, and it’s nice to see entire flamboyances of them now. And then you look at the scrub-jay, and it’s going the way of the orange groves. It’s being bulldozed away. I just want to make people aware that we’ve got to do a better job of protecting scrub-jays’ habitat, recognizing it and providing better support for them and the flamingo.”
Mooney’s 2025 version of the bill died without a hearing. Its upper-chamber analog by Miami Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia fared better, clearing two of three committee stops with uniform support before stalling in the Senate Rules Committee, which Republican Kathleen Passidomo of Naples chairs.
“Ileana did a great job of presenting it,” Mooney said, adding that he expects the legislation to fare better in the House this time around. “Speaker (Daniel Perez) promised me he’d hear it.”
Efforts in Florida to replace the mockingbird, the state bird of four other states, have persisted for years.
The most prominent push came in the 1990s, when students tried to make the change but encountered a powerful foe in then-National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer. In one Palm Beach Post op-ed at the time, she described scrub-jays as “evil little birds that rob the nests of other birds” and suffer from a “welfare mentality” because they were known to eat food from other people’s hands.
During talks last year about Garcia and Mooney’s proposals, Jason Oberlink, the Legislative Director of Florida for All and a self-professed “bird nerd,” derided Hammer’s “bizarre crusade” against the scrub-jay, whose return from the brink of extinction reflects Florida’s resilience and shows that “even in devastation, there is still hope.”
“This bill won’t stop the climate crisis or stop corporate polluters from driving it,” Oberlink said. “But it does send a message: recognizing the flamingo and the Florida scrub-jay affirms our commitment to preserving what makes Florida special.”
Mooney acknowledged Friday that there are more pressing problems than which fowls fly as Florida’s finest.
“I’ve got my insurance bill coming too,” he said. “I’ve got some other good stuff coming.”
HB 11 is the first bill Mooney has filed for the 2026 Legislative Session, the regular schedule of which is set to run Jan. 13 to March 31.
