Battle of the birds: Will ‘Big Chicken' thrash the state's winged mascot?

By Ty Tagami and Mike Morris

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It's commerce versus conservation. White meat versus warblers.

Georgia, a state riven by left wing and right wing politics, now has a new partisan divide.

On one side, yummy chicken. On the other, a bird with a pretty voice and a storied history.

Last week, an Augusta restaurateur launched a grass roots effort to change Georgia's official state bird from the brown thrasher to the chicken.

Now, a well-known Georgia conservation group is pushing back, promising to defend the throaty -- if inedible -- warbler's lofty perch.

"Don't get us wrong. Georgians love our chicken at mealtime, but the idea of making the chicken our state bird crosses the line from sanity to insanity," Pierre Howard, the conservation group's president, said in a declaration of war issued Monday.  "The Georgia Conservancy will do everything in our power to make sure that such a travesty does not occur."

Howard is firing back at Chris Cunningham, president of the company that operates eight Wife Saver restaurants in Georgia and South Carolina.

"I've got a lot of brown thrashers in my back yard; they're all over the place," Cunningham said last week. He is using an economic argument, claiming that the brown thrasher's title is a "waste." The brown thrasher, he says, "hasn't done anything. It's a pretty bird, nothing against the brown thrasher, but the chicken brings millions of dollars."

Cunningham spearheaded a new Web site with an online petition, flipthebirds.com, that invites people to write their state representatives.

Howard, meanwhile, has unveiled his own petition, www.georgiaconservancy.org. He is making an appeal to history.

The brown thrasher has been Georgia's bird ever since a boy from Rabun County heard one singing in a pear tree during recess one April day, Howard said.

Timmy Davis was mesmerized by the bird's "nobility" and "beauty," Howard said, and he started a movement to elevate it. Votes were taken in every school in the state, and on April 6, 1935, after a landslide decision, then-Gov. Eugene Talmadge declared the brown thrasher the state bird.  Eventually, in 1970, the General Assembly followed up with a resolution of its own enshrining the bird's high rank.

It's unclear whether the two sides have their tongues planted firmly in beak.

Cunningham, whose family opened the first Wife Saver restaurant in Augusta in 1965, points to the chicken processing industry in northeast Georgia, saying that "chicken that's processed in the state of Georgia is shipped all over the world. If it wasn't for the chicken, Georgia's economy would be in the tank."

"People need to get online, call us, get a yard sign, ask for a T-shirt, do something," Cunningham said. "I just want to see how people think about it, and maybe the legislators might listen to us. At last the chicken will get a little respect out of the deal."

Howard responds with allegations that Cunningham's movement is tainted by money.

"With this storied history, the brown thrasher has reigned as our state bird for 82 years, and now, motivated by the apparent desire for profit, Big Chicken has launched a website ... that calls for the General Assembly to ignore history and install the chicken as our new state bird," Howard wrote.

"The Georgia Conservancy," he said, "calls upon all Georgians to sign our petition to reject such a move."