Colorado State Bird: Lark Bunting

The strongest case for the Lark Bunting was geographic, not ornamental. Supporters argued that Colorado already had plenty of mountain imagery and needed one symbol that gave formal weight to the eastern plains.

The campaign also benefited from a practical point: better-known birds such as the meadowlark, robin, and bluebird were already tied to other states, while the Lark Bunting gave Colorado a cleaner claim of its own.

A Larimer County school poll gave the Lark Bunting early momentum, and students were part of the public campaign — but the overall process was messier than the polished version often repeated later. Denver Public Library's historical account shows competing ballots, organized lobbying, and a legislative fight in 1931.

The bird was argued into law. That makes the symbol more interesting than a tidy statewide vote story — and it explains why the geographic argument mattered enough to carry the campaign at all.

The Lark Bunting said Colorado was not only peaks, mines, and alpine scenery. It also had an agricultural and prairie side worth naming in state symbolism.

That is why the bird still works as a state emblem. Without it, Colorado's official symbols would point almost entirely toward the alpine and mountain west — the Rockies, the columbine, the bighorn sheep. The Lark Bunting is the one designation that formally acknowledges the shortgrass prairie and the agricultural plains that make up the state's eastern third.

Its long-term value is not that it is the flashiest bird Colorado could have chosen. It is that the bird forced the official symbol system to include the plains.