So Many Sports Teams Are Named for Birds—Here’s Why (and Where to Find Them)

From the Winter 2026 subject of Dwelling Hen journal. Subscribe now.

There’s an attention-grabbing schism between the birds of Nationwide Soccer League and Main League Baseball groups. Three of the birds that adorn NFL helmets are fierce: falcons, eagles, and Osprey (seahawks). In the meantime the three avian MLB groups are named for colourful yard birds: cardinals, Blue Jays, and Baltimore Orioles.

It’s as if the birds of professional sports activities groups mirror comic George Carlin’s well-known comparability: Soccer is about marching into enemy territory. In baseball, the purpose is to go house. 

Altogether there are 10 groups named for birds in skilled soccer, baseball, and basketball leagues—from raptors to songbirds to even a seabird. Birds are pure symbols for sports activities groups, possessing most of the qualities admired in athletes, akin to tenacity, pace, grace, and energy. And naturally, numerous birds are actually cute, which makes for lovable crew logos and mascots.

All the species that fly as professional sports activities crew symbols are widespread birds. For the superstitious fan, possibly seeing a crew’s namesake hen on recreation day might convey a bit additional luck. And normally, the avian icon is considerably simple to see inside or close to their respective cities. eBird may even allow you to get in your crew’s hen within the morning with loads of time to seek out your seats on the stadium earlier than kickoff/first pitch/tip-off.

Arizona Cardinals

Greater than 20 years earlier than becoming a member of the NFL as a constitution member in 1920, the Cardinals skilled soccer franchise began out because the Morgan Athletic Membership in Chicago. In 1901, crew proprietor Chris O’Brien bought used jerseys from the College of Chicago, and when he noticed the colour was a light maroon, he noticed, “That’s not maroon, it’s Cardinal crimson!” So the crew turned referred to as the Chicago Cardinals.

In 1929, after a vote by schoolchildren, Illinois chosen the Northern Cardinal as its state hen, which helped cement the cardinal as a proud image within the Land of Lincoln. However in 1960, the Cardinals moved to St. Louis to hitch the baseball Cardinals, leaving the Chicago Bears because the unique NFL crew within the Windy Metropolis. To keep away from confusion with the baseball crew, the Cardinals had been typically known as “The Large Purple,” or extra clumsily, the St. Louis soccer Cardinals.

Not like the pleasant trying cardinals featured on baseball uniforms, the soccer cardinal is angry-looking and angular, resembling a raptor greater than a songbird. The crew moved once more in 1988, this time to Arizona, and in 2005, the cardinals redesigned the crew emblem to make it even meaner.

“We’ve made the beak way more predatory and way more aggressive,” crew vice chairman Michael Bidwill stated on the time. (He’s now the proprietor.) “The face is way more streamlined. It’s sooner trying. The attention has been described as imply, we’ll say powerful. We’ve taken tail feathers and given them pace, as properly.”

Cardinals in Arizona

Arizona is definitely house to 2 various kinds of cardinals. Traditionally talking, the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), primarily an japanese species, would have been a puzzling alternative as a crew mascot within the Desert Southwest. But over the previous century, on account of Northern Cardinal vary growth, cardinals have gotten a typical sight in parks and backyards in some components of Arizona. In 2024, a Northern Cardinal was reported on 16% of all eBird checklists within the Phoenix metro space.

Much less widespread—however simply as a lot of a cardinal—is the Pyrrhuloxia (Cardinalis sinuatus), also called the desert cardinal. Pyrrhuloxia favor drier, wilder areas of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts. 

Philadelphia Eagles

The Philadelphia Eagles origin story dates again greater than 90 years to America’s restoration from the Nice Melancholy—impressed by the eagle on an emblem of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Nationwide Restoration Administration.

Philadelphia’s first NFL crew, the Yellow Jackets, performed within the metropolis’s Frankford neighborhood earlier than going out of enterprise in 1931, a sufferer of the Melancholy and a number of other stadium fires. Lud Wray and Bert Bell, who had been school soccer teammates on the College of Pennsylvania, joined forces to put money into a alternative crew.

In response to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bell’s spouse, the actress Frances Upton Bell, put up her husband’s $2,500 share (about $62,000 in 2025 {dollars}). After the Bells went to Metropolis Corridor to start taking the Yellow Jackets out of chapter, Bert Bell noticed the distinctive Nationwide Restoration Act placard in a window, which featured a blue eagle. Bell thought that the eagle can be a fantastic title for the brand new crew.

“He requested my mom what she thought,” their son, Upton Bell, advised the Inquirer in 2019. “She stated, ‘That’s it.’”

The Philadelphia Eagles started play in that 1933 season, and they might simply outlast the company that impressed them. In 1935, the Nationwide Restoration Administration was invalidated by the USA Supreme Court docket.

Right this moment, the Eagles’ mascot, Lincoln, is a captive Bald Eagle that entertains followers by flying by the crew’s stadium earlier than video games.

Eagles in Philadelphia

Pesticides and direct persecution as soon as led to the near-elimination of Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) from most areas of the nation by the mid-Twentieth century. In 1963, there have been solely about 400 eagle nests left within the Decrease 48 States. Pennsylvania was no exception—with solely three identified eagle nests left within the state round 1980. Right this moment there are greater than 70,000 eagle nests within the contiguous U.S. [see “USFWS Report Finds Four Times More Bald Eagles in the Lower 48 States,” Summer 2021], and nests will be noticed inside Philadelphia’s metropolis limits at hotspots like Pennypack on the Delaware. In response to eBird knowledge, Bald Eagles had been recorded on 11% of all checklists from the Philadelphia metro space in 2024. The perfect place to see Bald Eagles close to the Metropolis of Brotherly Love appears to be the John Heinz Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, the place the species appeared on 48% of eBird checklists in 2024.

Much less acquainted as a neighborhood hen for Philly birders is the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), which breeds no nearer than northeastern Canada. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania sits alongside a migratory hall for this majestic raptor, and eBird knowledge present that a number of Golden Eagles are noticed in autumn at a number of hawkwatch websites within the Philly metro space, together with Rose Tree Park, Ashland Nature Middle, and Militia Hill at Fort Washington State Park.

Atlanta Falcons

A 12 months earlier than the Atlanta Falcons  made their debut as an NFL growth crew in 1966, they held a contest to decide on a crew title. Forty folks recommended the profitable entry, however it was a schoolteacher from Griffin, Georgia, named Julia Elliott who received the credit score for the crew title due to her descriptive reasoning: “The falcon is proud and dignified, with nice braveness and combat.”

Falcons beat out different proposed names akin to Lancers, Firebirds, and Thunderbirds. The mascot at Griffin Excessive Faculty, the place Elliott taught, was birdy as properly—an eagle—and he or she was referred to as “Mama Eagle” due to how she championed the varsity’s sports activities.

Falcons in Atlanta

Though two different falcon species on the smaller aspect—Merlin and American Kestrel—will be present in Georgia, the soccer crew most certainly would determine with the famend pace and energy of the Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus).

Peregrine Falcon is one other species that was decimated by DDT and different pesticides, extirpated from the japanese United States by the mid-Sixties—with solely about 300 nests left in all of North America by 1975. However due to the banning of DDT and an intensive captive breeding and reintroduction program that put greater than 6,000 younger falcons out into the wild by the top of the Twentieth century, the continental peregrine population rebounded strongly. The Peregrine Falcon was triumphantly faraway from the Endangered Species listing in 1999, the identical 12 months the Atlanta Falcons made it to their first Tremendous Bowl.

Falcons had been launched at a number of websites in Georgia within the late Nineteen Eighties, largely at cliffs and canyon websites that the birds traditionally favored for nesting. A nest at Tallulah Gorge within the state’s northeastern nook was the primary in a wild Georgia setting in almost a century. There have been city reintroductions of Peregrine Falcons within the Atlanta metro space as properly, and a minimum of two of those efforts resulted in profitable breeding seasons. One pair of peregrines nested on a balcony on the Truist (previously Solar Belief) Plaza tower, the second-tallest skyscraper in Atlanta, from the mid-Nineties by a minimum of 2015.

Today, a Peregrine Falcon is a difficult get for a birder in Atlanta. In response to eBird, there have been just a few peregrine sightings downtown inside the previous 12 months. Falcons have additionally been noticed out in Taylorsville, Georgia, about an hour’s drive northeast of Atlanta close to the intersection of Brandon Farm and Taff roads.

Seattle Seahawks

The Seattle Seahawks entered the NFL as an growth crew in 1976 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and so they additionally received their title in a fan contest, when 153 folks selected the nickname for his or her new crew. Whereas there isn’t an precise hen referred to as a Seahawk, the title is basically a stand-in for Ospreys, that are typically known as sea hawks.

Right this moment, the Seahawks have a mascot that seems at video games that’s really a buzzard—an Augur Buzzard, a form of hawk native to Africa. Named Taima, the captive-reared buzzard was born on the World Hen Sanctuary in St. Louis. She flies across the Seahawks’ stadium earlier than kickoff, and he or she’s so fan-friendly that she as soon as landed on a fan’s head. Some gamers contact the hen earlier than video games for good luck.

Ospreys in Seattle

The crew’s emblem might have been extra impressed by Indigenous mythology than any area information, however Seattle is house to an actual hen referred to as the “sea hawk”—the Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), a hyper-specialized fishing machine and one of the extensively distributed birds on this planet.

Ospreys thrive amidst the considerable water our bodies of the Puget Sound area, sometimes arriving from Mexico and Central America every year in early April on the lookout for spots to construct their large, ramshackle nests. Cell-phone towers and light-weight poles will do for holding an Osprey nest, which has prompted town some consternation. Lately Seattle has lent the birds a hand by putting in nest platforms at websites like Ballard Locks, the place the waters usually teem with migrating salmon, making for terrific alternatives to look at Ospreys in motion catching fish. In response to eBird knowledge, the Baywood Nature Path a couple of 40-minute drive north of Seattle is the most effective Osprey-watching hotspot within the space, with the species reported on greater than 60% of checklists in 2024.

Baltimore Ravens

The Baltimore Ravens have one of the uncommon crew title lineages in professional sports activities—impressed by the well-known 1845 poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe, who lived for a number of years in Baltimore. The Ravens franchise began out because the Cleveland Browns, earlier than proprietor and president Artwork Modell moved them to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Baltimore had been house to a different NFL crew, the Colts, from 1953 to 1983, earlier than they moved to Indianapolis. Upon transferring the Browns to Baltimore, Modell first checked with the now-Indianapolis Colts to see in the event that they’d half with the title. However the Colts stated no, so Modell’s crew partnered with the Baltimore Solar to conduct a phone ballot that allowed followers to decide on a brand new title for the Appeal Metropolis soccer crew. “Ravens” gained in a landslide, receiving 63.4% of the tally, defeating different potential names akin to “Individuals” and “Marauders”.

Baltimore soccer followers had been thrilled that their new crew’s image can be a hen that’s sleek, clever, and considerably mystical. In response to the scientists who wrote the Widespread Raven species account within the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of the World on-line scholarly content material platform: “Poets and authors of Western cultures have usually used the raven to represent demise, hazard, and knowledge.”

Ravens in Baltimore

For a lot of the nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, the Widespread Raven (Corvus corax) had a tough go of it within the japanese United States. Rampant capturing and deforestation drove the species from the Jap Seaboard into distant strongholds within the mountains and much north. By the 1840s, many early readers of Poe’s poem (which was written in New York Metropolis, by the way) wouldn’t have been in a position to evaluate his imaginative depiction to any wild hen.

To borrow a picture from the poet himself, the pendulum now swings within the different route, and ravens are returning to many components of the Piedmont and Coastal Plain. The Maryland & DC Breeding Hen Atlas mission, supported by eBird, has even documented 4 raven nests inside Baltimore’s metropolis limits. Within the metropolis, they appear to want nest websites beneath massive bridges. However one pair of Widespread Ravens stumbled upon probably the most becoming location of all in 2020, nesting within the rafters of M&T Financial institution Stadium, house of the soccer Ravens. A number of eBirders have reported ravens on their checklists close to the stadium over the previous few years.

In response to eBird, the Owings Nature Middle, a couple of half-hour’s drive northwest of Baltimore, is the most effective place to see ravens within the area, with 36% of eBird checklists ticking Corvus corax there.

St. Louis Cardinals

In an odd coincidence, the St. Louis Cardinals have an identical origin story for his or her title as their soccer cousins, the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals had been initially named for a daring shade of crimson, however the crew would in the end undertake the hen as its proud id.

In 1899, the franchise’s new proprietor modified the title from Browns to Perfectos, and outfitted the gamers in crimson trim and socks. St. Louis Republic columnist Willie McHale heard a younger lady within the stands remark, “Oh, isn’t {that a} pretty shade of cardinal?”—and he started utilizing it in his copy. The title shortly caught on with followers. By the subsequent 12 months, the crew modified its title to the Cardinals, and it has caught for some 125 years and counting.

The franchise’s iconic “Birds on the Bat” emblem didn’t debut till the Twenties. In 1921, crew supervisor Department Rickey (who 20 years later, as president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, would signal Jackie Robinson to interrupt baseball’s shade barrier) attended an occasion at a neighborhood church and observed the desk decorations adorned with a pair of cardinals. That they had been designed by a lady named Allie Could Schmidt, impressed by the sight of a Northern Cardinal outdoors her window. That gave Rickey the thought to place the birds on the crew’s uniform, and in 1922, the crew began sporting the acquainted two cardinals atop a bat. 

In the course of the 2025 season, Cardinals gamers leaned into the crew’s hen nickname, flapping their arms like a hen every time they reached base. 

Cardinals in St. Louis

The Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is likely one of the most ubiquitous birds within the St. Louis space, a species discovered on 69% of all eBird checklists from inside the metropolis in 2024 (second-most-sighted species in St. Louis, simply behind the American Robin).

But even a well-recognized, widespread hen can maintain some surprises. Simply after Christmas in 2024, a St. Louis birder noticed a cardinal that seemed to be a standard grownup male in each respect—besides that it was yellow, as a substitute of crimson, from crest to tail. The hen had an ultra-rare situation typically referred to as xanthochroism, a mutation that stops the conversion of yellow pigment (lutein) to crimson. The few such yellow cardinals which were reported have grow to be instantaneous celebrities, drawing well-earned consideration to the fascinating world of avian shade biology. 

The fortunate birder who noticed this distinctive visitor at his yard hen feeder was Taka Yanagimoto, who additionally occurs to be the director of images for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball crew. He noticed it the morning after Christmas.

“I opened up the sliding door in our sunroom, and … he was in all probability 10 toes away,” Yanagimoto advised St. Louis Public Radio. “He got here nearer, tilted his head, and checked out me considerably curiously.”

Baltimore Orioles

If there was ever a metropolis that had a hen title tailored for a baseball crew, it was Baltimore and the Baltimore Oriole. The town’s title derives from Lord Baltimore, Cecil Calvert, who’s credited with settling the colony of Maryland within the 1600s. The Baltimore Oriole, in flip, received its title as a result of its black-and-orange colours mirror Lord Baltimore’s coat of arms.

The Baltimore Orioles baseball crew started play in 1954, after beforehand spending a half-century in St. Louis because the Browns (a definite crew from the Eighteen Nineties St. Louis Browns). The American League authorised the franchise’s transfer to Baltimore after the 1953 season, and the brand new homeowners selected the a lot flashier “Orioles” as the brand new title. 

The hen has been tied to Baltimore baseball courting again to a Baltimore Orioles crew that performed within the previous American Affiliation from 1882 to 1891. A separate Baltimore Orioles franchise was a constitution member of the American League in 1901, however disbanded the subsequent 12 months and was changed by a brand new crew in New York, referred to as the Highlanders. Right this moment that crew is named the New York Yankees.

Orioles in Baltimore

For over a decade, the Baltimore Orioles baseball crew suffered the ignominy of a birdy namesake that had been stripped of its ornithological recognition as a species.

In 1983, the American Ornithologists’ Union lumped the Baltimore Oriole of the japanese United States and the Bullock’s Oriole of the West below a single title, the “Northern Oriole.” Identical to that, the baseball crew now formally (in response to ornithologists) bore the title of a ghost. However that didn’t forestall the crew from profitable the World Sequence that season.

In 1995 the AOU did an about-face and re-split the 2 species, based on genetic evidence that hybridization was limited and didn’t contribute to vital gene circulate. Right this moment the title Baltimore Oriole is as soon as once more a daily sight within the Appeal Metropolis, each on baseball jerseys and on almost 3,000 eBird checklists in 2024. The perfect place to see a Baltimore Oriole (the hen) close to Baltimore, in response to 2024 eBird knowledge, is Cromwell Valley Park about 20 miles north of town. Orioles had been ticked on 30% of all checklists at that location.

Toronto Blue Jays

The Blue Jays, an growth crew that began play in 1977, received their title from a fan contest the earlier 12 months. However it wasn’t a pure vote of the folks.

In August 1976, the Toronto baseball possession group held a crew title contest and obtained 4,000 totally different concepts from greater than 30,000 voters. A panel of 14 judges narrowed down 10 finalists for the group’s board of administrators to pick out a reputation. They went with Blue Jays, touting the title for a “sturdy, aggressive” hen that “dares to tackle all comers.”

Some critics thought that sturdy and aggressive habits was off-putting. Within the Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail, columnist Christie Blatchford wrote: “One of many Blue Jay’s most repugnant habits is its fondness for consuming the eggs and nestlings of different birds.”

However different Canadians had been all in on the title, together with Ron Thorpe, who was the president of the Toronto Discipline Naturalists Membership again then. 

“I believe it’s fairly applicable,” Thorpe advised the Toronto Star on the time. “It’s an excellent concept. I hope the ball goes as quick as a jay can fly. It simply goes to indicate how individuals are extra environmentally oriented than they was once.”

Blue Jays in Toronto

Many birdwatchers consider the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) as a hen that seems as a lone maverick or in small gangs to wreak havoc at feeders. Not removed from Toronto, nevertheless, one can witness a Blue Jay phenomenon on a radically totally different scale. In southern Ontario there’s a fantastic Blue Jay migration as jays depart from their breeding grounds throughout southern Ontario and Quebec within the fall and fly west and south, following the north shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

Throughout years when the crop of acorns and beechnuts has been poor, these migratory actions can attain epic proportions. An all-time eBird excessive depend for Blue Jays—not just for Ontario, however for anyplace on this planet—was logged on October 1, 2009, when observers on the Vacation Seashore Migration Observatory counted the passage of a staggering 158,300 jays. 

Blue Jays are fairly considerable round Toronto as properly, showing on 37% of all eBird checklists from inside the metro space. The perfect place to frequently see a Blue Jay appears to be simply past the Toronto metropolis limits on the Rosetta McClain Gardens in the neighborhood of Scarborough. Greater than eight in 10 eBird checklists from that hotspot in 2024 included a Blue Jay.

Atlanta Hawks

The Atlanta Hawks, acquainted to basketball followers with the crew’s emblem of a fierce-looking hawk profile, weren’t initially named for a hen. They started play in 1949 as a constitution member of the NBA from the Mississippi River cities of Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, and so they had been referred to as Tri-Cities Blackhawks—an homage to the Sauk Tribal Chief Black Hawk. After two seasons, the franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1951 and have become simply the “Hawks,” with a generic hawk perched on a basketball, its wings outstretched.

The crew moved once more in 1955 to grow to be the St. Louis Hawks, and after a few seasons the emblem modified to a caricature of an offended hawk holding a basketball. After 13 seasons, the Hawks migrated once more, this time south to Atlanta, the place they’ve performed since 1968.

Hawks in Atlanta

“Hawks” isn’t a really particular crew title so far as hen identification. The Atlanta space hosts three widespread species of year-round hawk residents—Purple-tailed, Purple-shouldered, and Cooper’s Hawks—together with one breeding species (Broad-winged Hawk) that departs for the tropics every fall, and one other species (Sharp-shinned Hawk) that migrates in from the north to take its place.

To muddy the waters additional, Georgia birders can count on to see birds colloquially referred to as Fish Hawk (Osprey), Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier), Duck Hawk (Peregrine Falcon), Pigeon Hawk (Merlin), Sparrow Hawk (American Kestrel), and Widespread Nighthawk (of the avian household nightjars). 

To expertise the fullest number of hawks within the Atlanta space, birders can head to the eBird hotspot at Panola Mountain State Park within the fall only a half-hour’s drive southwest from downtown. This well-preserved granite summit gives a terrific vantage level for migration, the place an area-leading 16 raptor species have been seen. In response to eBird knowledge in 2024, the Panola Mountain space is an effective guess to see Purple-shouldered and Purple-tailed Hawks (46% and 37% of eBird checklists within the space, respectively).

New Orleans Pelicans

The 1988 NBA growth crew initially referred to as the Charlotte Hornets stored its title when it moved to New Orleans in 2002, however “New Orleans Hornets” by no means fairly sounded proper. So in 2013, after contemplating 100 totally different various names, crew homeowners switched to “Pelicans.” It was a no brainer. In spite of everything, Louisiana is named the Pelican State, and the Brown Pelican is the state hen. The hen is even the centerpiece of the Louisiana flag, sitting in a nest feeding three chicks, above the phrases “UNION JUSTICE CONFIDENCE.”

“The pelican is a logo for our metropolis and area,” then-owner Tom Benson stated when the crew title change took impact after the ultimate recreation of the 2012–2013 season.

The New Orleans Pelicans aren’t the primary sports activities crew within the metropolis to undertake the hen as its title. The Large Simple had a minor league baseball crew with the identical nickname from 1887 to 1959, and once more in 1977.

Pelicans in New Orleans

A contemporary-day customer to New Orleans gained’t have to attend lengthy to come across a Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)—cruising down the Mississippi River, plunging into Lake Pontchartrain, or loafing alongside the shores of the lakes in Metropolis Park. Brown Pelicans have been documented on a couple of fifth (17%) of all eBird checklists from the New Orleans metro space.

However when the Brown Pelican was formally named because the state hen again within the Sixties, there was hardly a pelican to be present in all of Louisiana. Eggshell-thinning pesticides had annihilated the massive breeding colonies on the state’s barrier islands. 

The banning of DDT and an aggressive reintroduction program ultimately introduced the enduring species again, solely to be dealt one other blow by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. A decade of coastal restoration work funded by billions of {dollars} in penalties on BP and its enterprise companions has helped pelicans in Louisiana rebound once more, with thriving colonies on Queen Bess Island and on islands in Breton Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, on the outskirts of the New Orleans metro space.