The Free Land of Thick-Billed Longspur is a huge, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its deadly medical pandemics, fear of technology, and suspicion of poets. The compassionate, hard-working, democratic, devout population of 764 million Birdian enjoy a sensible mix of personal and economic freedoms, while the political process is open and the people's right to vote held sacrosanct.

The large, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Welfare, Administration, and Spirituality. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 56.1%.

The very strong Birdian economy, worth 56.7 trillion Bird Seeds a year, is quite specialized and led by the Tourism industry, with major contributions from Gambling, Retail, and Soda Sales. Black market activity is rampant. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is 74,173 Bird Seeds, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 361,325 per year while the poor average 8,774, a ratio of 41.2 to 1.

Classes are regularly interrupted by drunken children, slavers view "what did your last slave die of" as a request for a demonstration, babies are a small but significant export, and the request to "give us our daily bread" can only be fulfilled six days out of seven. Crime, especially youth-related, is all-pervasive, probably because of the absence of a police force. Thick-Billed Longspur's national animal is the Thick-Billed Longspur, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Thick-Billed Longspur is ranked 84,010^th in the world and 41^st in The Bar on the corner of every region for Most Advanced Public Education, scoring 1,973.03 on the Edu-tellignce® Test Score.