This beautiful poster was inspired by
the stamps issued by the United States Postal Service in 1982, which quickly became
the best-selling ones in American history. You would expect the state bird of
Maryland to be the Baltimore oriole and you can understand New Mexico being represented
by the road-runner, but why did dry, land-locked Utah choose the California seagull?
It was because in 1848, the gulls saved the early settlers from starvation by
eating up the Rocky Mountain locusts that were destroying their crops. The fifty
states are listed alphabetically. Each bird and flower is identified by both its
common and its scientific name.
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