Virginia State Bird: Northern Cardinal

Virginia's cardinal story reaches back further than the 1950 designation. The Virginia Museum of History & Culture's page on Mark Catesby reproduces his account of the bird as one frequently brought from Virginia and other parts of North America for its beauty and agreeable singing.

That is not the same as saying Virginia had an official bird in the colonial period. It does show that the cardinal already lived inside a Virginia way of describing local nature long before the code named it.

So when Virginia later adopted the cardinal, the Commonwealth was not building the symbol from nothing. It was giving legal force to a bird that already sounded at home in Virginia writing and memory.

Section 1-510 now states the point plainly: the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is the official bird of the Commonwealth. The code history traces Virginia's emblem provisions back to the Code of 1950.

The short wording is revealing. Virginia did not attach a long argument to the symbol or try to justify it through bird-guide facts. It simply placed the cardinal among the Commonwealth's official emblems.

By 1950 the bird appears to have needed little defense. Virginia was formalizing a choice that already felt settled enough to enter the emblem list without an argument.

Virginia later gave the cardinal a public partner instead of leaving it alone in one line of code. Section 46.2-728.1 authorizes special license plates incorporating the official bird and the floral emblem of the Commonwealth.

In practice that means the cardinal is easy to read beside the dogwood. The pairing turns the bird into part of a fuller Virginia image rather than a standalone wildlife label.

The pairing is not the source of the state bird law, but it matters for what the symbol became. Six other states also use the cardinal. Virginia's recurring cardinal-and-dogwood combination is one reason the bird reads as specifically Virginian rather than just a widely shared choice.