As of 2024, Maine's official state bird is only listed broadly as "a chickadee", commonly held to refer to the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus). While these symbols were accepted more than a century after statehood, this can be metaphorically viewed as a holdover in its shared history with the state of Massachusetts, whose state bird is specified as "the black-capped chickadee". This connection isn’t exactly the issue, but it does create some ambiguity and symbolically downplays Maine's cultural independence from Massachusetts. To both emphasize this independence while also acknowledging that our two peoples have much in common, this petition proposes specifying Maine's state bird as the boreal chickadee (Poecile hudsonicus), and further showing our uniqueness as one of the few US state where this species of chickadee is relatively common and found throughout.