Birdie Sanders

About

Birdie Sanders is the nickname given to a bird that flew onto the podium in front of the Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders during his speech at a campaign rally in Portland, Oregon in late March 2016.

Origin

On March 25th, 2016, Democratic primary presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made an appearance at a campaign rally held at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon. During his speech, a brown house finch flew onto the stage, which immediately prompted cheers and laughters from the crowd (shown below). As Sanders, who seemed just as entertained by the unexpected intruder, tried to resume his speech, the bird approached the Vermont senator even closer by perching on his podium, triggering further excitement and bewilderment from his supporters in attendance, as well as many others online who witnessed the strange interruption via livecast.^[1]

Spread

Within minutes of the bird's charming interruption at the event, Politico^[2] posted a video clip of the memorable moment on Twitter, where it garnered more than 49,000 likes and 36,000 retweets in the first 72 hours, including a mention of the hashtag #BirdieSanders^[5] from Bernie Sanders' official Twitter account.^[3] Throughout the day, the avian intrusion at Bernie Sanders' rally dominated the social media discussions relating to the United States primaries and caucuses, which were followed by mentions from viral media blogs^[13][16] and social news aggregators^[6], as well as coverage of the trending hashtag #BirdieSanders from major news outlets across the country^{[7][8][9][12][15]} and overseas.^[10][14]

Examples

Official Poster

On the next day, Bernie Sanders' campaign team released a colorfully illustrated poster on Twitter as a tribute to the candidate's unscheduled encounter with the bird (shown below).

Search Interest

External References