Black-capped chickadee rules the roost as the City of Regina's new official bird
The announcement comes as Canada celebrates National Bird Day
The black-capped chickadee has been crowned as Regina's new official bird.
Angela Tremka, program co-ordinator for Bird Friendly Regina, made the egg-citing announcement to a gaggle of reporters on Friday — which was also National Bird Day.
Mayor Sandra Masters, sitting at a table with a stuffed black-capped chickadee and cookies decorated with an image of the bird, signed the declaration that made it official.
"The accessibility of this bird makes it perfect for our city," Masters said after the announcement. "My office got into a huge debate about 'What about a prairie chicken? What about a chicken hawk? What about a …' OK, calm down!"
The contest started in March 2022 when the City of Regina was declared a bird-friendly city by Nature Canada.
In 2023, nominations started flying in, with as many as 700 finding a perch, according to the city, before six finalists were eventually chosen.
The six finalists up for consideration were the peregrine falcon, red-breasted nuthatch, grey partridge, Canada goose, American pelican and black-capped chickadee.
Experts and local celebrities took to the radio waves, urging residents to vote for a preferred candidate.
The chickadee ultimately earned more than 8,500 votes of the 21,000 votes that were cast.
Ryan Fisher, the advocate for the chickadee, was overjoyed that his tiny little friend took the top spot.
"The black-capped chickadee is a small bird that punches above its weight, just like Regina," he said. "We're a small-medium-sized city that punches above our weight in Canada."
Fisher, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, says that unlike some of the other finalists, the chickadee does not take flight and head south for the winter, which might explain why it won the honour.
Masters says she understands why people would not stop beaking back and forth about who should win.
"We are a community that really does celebrate nature," she said. "I think it's something that we sometimes take for granted. But if you look at the way we maintain our park space — even the volume of park space that we have — I think we're a community that really values it.
"To have something like a little fun competition around it, it connects us."
Public voting took place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 10, and while everyone seemed resigned to the outcome on Friday, the competition did ruffle a few feathers, especially when the chickadee miraculously garnered thousands of votes overnight on Dec. 5, leading to conspiracy theories and allegations of fowl play.
That morning Stefani Langenegger, host of CBC Radio's The Morning Edition, posted on social media that the chickadee had clearly won the contest. She said the bird had thousands more votes than its main contender — the red-breasted nuthatch.
Regina resident Marc Spooner, a fan of the "noble" and "honest" red-breasted nuthatch, said he and his family had been watching the votes closely and noticed something was off the previous week.
"On the night of Dec. 5 … we ate supper, we went to bed like normal. I didn't expect anything was amiss," Spooner said.
LISTEN| Fowl play alleged in vote for Regina's official bird
As always, Spooner checked the city's voting page before bed to catch up on the numbers. He said the red-breasted nuthatch was ahead, followed closely by the chickadee.
"But when I woke up in the morning and I checked the totals, lo and behold, the chickadee had garnered 2,371 votes overnight while Regina sleeps. And that got me thinking, you know, Big Chickadee was behind this. Something was afoot."
CBC has not been able to confirm that fraud of any kind took place.
Now the controversy has been put to rest. The black-capped chickadee rules the roost.
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With files from Laura Sciarpelletti and Tyreike Reid