For my historical chart, I have created a map that lists all of the current nations (except for South Sudan, which Google doesn’t recognize, apparently, and Scotland, which isn’t considered a separate nation from the UK) who’s national bird is an eagle.

Purple indicates a nation with an eagle as it’s national bird; blue indicates a nation with more than one national bird (but where one of the two is an eagle).

One of the interesting things I realized was that, with the exception of the Golden Eagle and the Bald Eage (the national birds of the US, Mexico, and Scotland), all species of eagles are threatened or endangered species.

Eagles are predominantly used in nations with a western culture, likely harkening back to the Roman Empire. For those nations that do not have a western culture (Phillipines, Indonesia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), the use of the eagle likely correlates to regional and pseudo religious traditions praising the eagle, or because the colonial, imperial powers which had conquered the regions used eagles as a sign of imperialism (in the case of the phillipines).

I expected that eagles would make up a greater portion of national birds. But it makes sense that many nations didn’t choose the eagle. For example, the unofficial national bird of Australia is the emu. This makes sense because it is quintessentially australian. On the other hand, the use of macaws by some central american nations, probably correlates to a desire to increase tourism. And finally, some nations may have purposefully chosen a bird other than an eagle to underscore their new freedoms away from an old, oppressive imperialist system (particularly in South America).