Garden birds of Singapore

From left to right :
Lesser Coucal (番鵑) ; Pink-necked Green Pigeon (紅頸綠鳩)
Collared Scops Owl (領角鴞)
Singapore (1993)
29th October, 2010. Clementi West

Singapore is a well-known garden city in the world, more than 200 bird species to be found in this small south-east Asian country. Although it was over-developed, the country still provides attractive environment to birds, either resident or migratory. In 1993, three of domestic birds gone to a set of aerogrammes. Thanks Eddie found me these nice collectable items.

Lesser Coucal is domestic bird in south-east Asia, resident from Taiwan to Indonesia, easily to be found in lawns, grasslands or wastelands. It diets mostly are large insects, frogs, lizards, snakes. Pink-necked Green Pigeon also a resident bird of south-east Asia, it diets fruit. The colourful greenish features are attractive to people but it mostly stays in the tree. Collared Scops Owl appears at night, commonly to be found in south-east Asia, from Taiwan, coast of south-China includes Hongkong and most south-east Asian countries.

These three birds are very common in Singapore and can be found them whole of year.

Save the albatross

Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross (大西洋黃鼻信天翁)
Tristan da Cunha (2003)
6th October, 2010. Tristan da Cunha

Beside of the farewell cover shown in last post, I receive an aerogramme on meanwhile. This attractive aerogramme is famous known after it issued which as a part of stamp series Save the albatross on 2003, a souvenir sheet which six stamps. The sheet, also the aerogramme illustrate Yellow-nosed Albatross on the islands, which was formally called before 2004. Later on, BirdLife International split the species into Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross Thalassarche chlororhynchos and Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross (印度洋黃鼻信天翁) Thalassarche carteri, specify two species in two different regions.

Different than Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross, it is in larger size. Mostly it to be found in South Atlantic Ocean and Southern Ocean ; also partly Indian Ocean. This endangered species only has population 55,000 to 83,200 when recorded on 2001 by BirdLife International, and most of birds breeding in Tristan da Cunha and surrounded islands. As well as other albatross, the main reason of population decreasing caused by longline fishing in southern oceans.

To conserve the albatrosses, islands nearby Tristan da Cunha, included Gough Island, Nightingale Islands and Inaccessible Island are nature preserves and be listed as World Heritage Site by UNESCO at 2004.

Polar Bear Knut features King Penguin

Polar Bear (北極熊)
(picture illustrated Emperor Penguin (皇帝企鵝)
Germany (2008)
16th March, 2009. Bad Camberg

This special pre-paid envelope was commemorated International Polar Year which held on 2007 to 2008, more than 20 countries issued related stamps during these two years, and I had shown the Portugal one in here. Now, here is one issued by Germany, it features a baby Polar Bear named Knut, who lives and born in Zoologischer Garten Berlin. Knut is very famous in Germany, when it was born, it has been given up by his mother Tosca - she rejected to feed her two babies without any reason. After 4 days, Kunt's bother died and he divided with his mother by feeders of zoo.

On the cover shows on the left side is an icebreaker Polarstern in Antarctic, in the front of the icebreaker are Emperor Penguins. The penguin only can be seen on Antarctic and Southern Ocean, and it is the largest Penguin in the world.

Thanks Katja from Italy and Erich from Germany on the great help of this envelope.

A sad news that Knut left the world on afternoon of 19 March (local time) at Zoologischer Garten Berlin, with unknown reason. He only has 4 years 3 months life when normally most of polar bear has 35 years. Most of Berliner feel brokenhearted when this news appeared.

Farewell to definitive of Tristan

35p : Great-winged Petrel (巨翅海燕) ; 5p : Antarctic Tern (南極燕鷗)
Tristan da Cunha (2005)
6th October, 2010. Tristan da Cunha

In 2005, Tristan da Cunha, is the remotest inhabit islands in the world issued a set of definitive stamps illustrate 16 Domestic birds. In early time of this blog, here has been shown an ordinary cover with some low-value stamps, and also one registered mail with traditional registration label. Thanks to the info of official site of Tristan da Cunha and the postmistress, this definitive will be withdrawn on October 31 of 2010, to be replaced by Conservation definitive on November. Also, the modern computerised UPU-designed registration code be introduced for a while, it is a time to update the covers from this remote islands.

Great-winged Petrel breeds in the range between 30 to 50 degrees south. Mostly colonies in Tristan da Cunha, Crozet Islands, the Kerguelen Islands and on the coasts of southern Australia, the sub-species to be found in northern New Zealand called Grey-faced Petrel (灰臉圓尾鸌).

Beside of this cover, there also arranged aerogramme, maxicard and cover of new definitive stamps, the areogramme will be shown on next post and other will be displayed when they received.

Is it a Nightingale ?

$2,50 : Bird in Moonlight (月夜小鳥) ; $3,00 : Flower and Butterfly (花蝶)

Hongkong (2009)

16th May, 2009. Hongkong

In 2009, Hongkong Post issued a set of Museum collections features 6 Chinese drawings and calligraphy. Two of them are collections of Hong Kong Heritage Museum illustrated beauty of nature. After the issue, I spent an afternoon to find these two drawings in the museum, and have a conclusion that the bird in the drawing Bird in Moonlight is Nightingale (夜鶯). It is not surprise as the artist GAO Qifeng (1889 - 1933) drew a bird singing at night with full-moon, the bird has black coloured back and write in stomach. For real bird of nightingale, it is brown coloured back with white stomach, and it likes to sing in midnight, so the drawing exactly similar to species, the variety because Chinese painting rarely to use brown ink.

Nightingale is frequency appear on art of culture, either west or east. The past maxicard of Slovenia, is an example of Slovenian poetry Simon Gregorčič (1844-1906) written a famous poem Soči related to Nightingale.

The other one drawing features nature is Flower and Butterfly by JU Lian (1828 - 1904). A butterfly stops in a peony (牡丹), however so pity that the butterfly is hard to identify.

SAPOA again

From left to right :
E 1,10 : Blue Crane (藍鶴) ; E 0,85 : Violet-crested Turaco (紫冠蕉鵑)
E 2,45 : Bar-tailed Trogon (斑尾咬鵑) ; E 1,35 : Western Cattle Egret (黃頭鷺)
Swaziland (2004)
25th September, 2010. Mbabane

If you have memory, in August of 2010 I had show a cover sent by Yoram, when he spent a safari trip to Zambia, it was feature a set of SAPOA stamps. Here I would present another cover features this joint-issue - Swaziland, which is a member of SAPOA. Seem I don't need spend the time to talk again these four species, but, these four are national birds of South Africa, Swaziland and Botswana. And also to be found in this small and poorest nation.

Unfortunately, the cover was not send by registered mail upon my request. However the philatelic bureau packed in an official envelope and sent to me. Below is the interesting registered cover by Swaziland Philatelic Bureau.

29th September, 2010. Mbabane
1st October, 2010. Manzini
8th October, 2010. New South Wales, Australia

Yellow-crowned Bishop and Golden-breasted Bunting

400F : Golden-breasted Bunting (金胸鵐)
270F : Yellow-crowned Bishop (黃頂寡婦鳥)
Benin (1999)
1st October, 2010. Cotonou (Poste Commerce Oanhi)

In recent days, the post office of Benin, where is a poor country in West Africa. Issued couple of overprinted stamps for ordinary use, wide ranges from the oldest Dahomey stamps to modern Benin stamps. Their market price quite interesting to collector but of course, they are not special to Benin locals. To collect a copy of the stamps - the best surprise is overprinted bird stamps, I tried to send a request to philatelic office of Benin on August 2010 and received the feedback after two months. Although it is not bird stamp, it still an overprint example.

Used on the cover are two domestic bird stamps - Yellow-crowned Bishop and Golden-breasted Bunting, while whole set of 6 stamps only these two to be found in Benin. Yellow-crowned Bishop is common to sub-Sahara area, sometimes it appears on European or Asian countries as they escaped from pet host. Golden-breasted Bunting also common to woodlands of sub-Sahara area, three subspecies are found and the one mostly appears in the southern edge area of Sahara is E. f. flavigaster.

Grand Cayman Parrot

Grand Cayman Amazon (開曼島亞馬遜鸚鵡)
Cayman Islands (1993, 1997)
5th October, 2010. North Side (Registered Dept.)

In the last post related to Ukraine, it shown a first day cover of Cuban Amazon (古巴亞馬遜鸚鵡) which commemorated 150th anniversary of foundation of Kiev Zoo. However, stamps illustrated wildlife is the first choice to collect and now I show one came from Cayman Islands, is one of World Wild Fund series in 1993 illustrates Grand Cayman Amazon, former was a sub-species of Cuban Amazon. The parrot is the national bird of Cayman Islands, the far-left stamp with description.

Grand Cayman Amazon is endemic to Cayman Islands, to be found in Grand Cayman only as it is restricted. Now the population about 3.400 birds and also recorded about 600 birds in Cayman Brac. On the Grand Cayman, the parrot easy to find in the trail of middle area according to the place is Central Mangrove Wetland and undeveloped.

Above cover sent from North Side post office, is one nearby post office of Central Mangrove Wetland. The postmark NS is the short-form of North Side. While other similar example H means Hell post office.