What is the bald eagle?
Answer
The national bird
Explanation
The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States. The Continental Congress chose the bald eagle as the central feature of the Great Seal of the United States on June 20, 1782, after a six-year design process beginning July 4, 1776 (the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted) that involved three separate committees. Charles Thomson, Secretary of Congress, prepared the final design, drawing on heraldic ideas submitted by William Barton, with the bald eagle replacing earlier proposals that had included Moses, the goddess Liberty, and a phoenix.
The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a large bird of prey native only to North America, found across Canada, the United States, and northern Mexico. Adults have a brown body, white head and tail, yellow beak and legs, and a wingspan of six to eight feet. The bird's name is from an old English word for white-headed; bald eagles are not actually featherless.
The species was chosen for its association with strength, courage, freedom, and long life, and because it was native to North America (Benjamin Franklin famously preferred the wild turkey, calling the eagle a Bird of bad moral Character in a January 26, 1784 letter to his daughter Sarah Bache, but his preference was personal and not the official position of Congress).
The bald eagle population collapsed during the twentieth century due to habitat loss, hunting, and especially the pesticide DDT, which weakened eggshells. By 1963 only 487 nesting pairs were left in the lower 48 states. The species was protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940 (16 U.S.C. sections 668 through 668d) and listed as endangered in 1967 under the Endangered Species Preservation Act and again under the 1973 Endangered Species Act.
After DDT was banned in 1972 and conservation programs were implemented, the population recovered, and the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list on June 28, 2007. There are now over 71,000 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states. The bald eagle was formally designated by statute as the national bird of the United States by Public Law 118-313, signed by President Joe Biden on December 24, 2024. Before that, the bald eagle had been the unofficial national bird since 1782 by virtue of its place on the Great Seal.
Why this matters for your test
Recognizing the bald eagle as the national bird connects applicants to a symbol that appears on the Great Seal, the Presidential Seal, currency, government buildings, military insignia, and naturalization documents. The bird's recovery from near extinction also illustrates the country's environmental policy at work.
Source: USCIS 128 Civics Questions (2025)
