Madison Wisconsin's Official Bird

On September 1st, 2009 the Madison, Wisconsin City Council voted 15-4 to recognize the plastic pink flamingo as the official city bird. I too wondered why and went on a fact finding mission of sorts. Here is what I learned.

In the late 70's at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Jim Mallon and Stu D. Baker became the founding members of the Pail and Shovel Party. In 1978, they ran for student council. One of their campaign promises was to convert the school's budget into pennies which would be spread on Library Mall for students to collect with pails and shovels. They were elected. The pair were responsible for many pranks at the school at the expense of the student government's budget. One of these pranks involved planting 1008 pink flamingos on Bascom Hill in the fall of 1979.


In April of this year, the Wisconsin Historical Museum's Odd Wisconsin exhibit was commemorating the 30th anniversary of the prank with pink flamingo sunglasses for visitors. Doug Moe, a writer for the Wisconsin State Journal, wrote a piece on the museum's exhibit and thought is was a good time to propose making the pink flamingo Madison's official bird. In fact Moe had proposed the same thing in 2006 when the company that created the pink flamingo announced it was closing. Apparently this time Ald. Marsha Rummel thought the idea was worthwhile. She was the sponsor of the resolution. After 5 minutes of debate a vote was held and the pink flamingo won!



UW-Madison student Joan O’Donnell snacks on Bascom Hill surrounded by 1,008 plastic flamingos Sept. 5, 1979.