LPO Centenary

From left to right :
Bluethroat (藍喉歌鴝) ; Atlantic Puffin (北極海鸚) ; Osprey (魚鷹)
Little Bustard (小鴇)
France (2012)
18th June, 2011. Amilly, Loiret

Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO) is the organization of bird conservation in France, which founded on 1912. In this year, to celebrate its centenary of the foundation, the organization held couple of activities and events. Except the personal stamps be arranged on early 2012, a souvenir sheet issued by La Post released on May. Above cover was the example of the full set of the stamps tear from the sheet. Thanks David and J. Pierre to help me coordinate the covers and maxicards.

300th anniversary of discovery of Clipperton Island

Austropacific Masked Booby (藍臉鰹鳥/西太平洋亞種)
France (2011)
2nd November, 2011. Igny, Essonne

After Martin de Chassiron and Michel Du Bocage discovered Clipperton Island, where is a coral reef island offshore of south-western Mexico. It becomes possession of France and now under trusteeship by French Polynesia. But course until now, it still an uninhabited island, and it only is a paradise of seabirds and couple species of crab. Few coconut palms are planted during some visitors visited.

The cover shown a stamp issued by La Postes to commemorate 300th anniversary of this discovery. Stamp clearly illustrated the bird's-eye viewed Clipperton Island, palm trees and the seabird. Probably it is sub-species of Masked Booby, a seabird quite commonly to be found in oceans. Other common seabirds can be observed are noddies, terns and bobbies.

24377A

Emperor Penguin (皇帝企鵝)
France (2009)
16th February, 2010. Oissel

What is 24377A ? Where did the mail come from ? Is it cancelled by secret post office ? Not yet, just a code of mail processing centre in France. Since the beginning of the 21st century, French post renewed their processing centre cancellations to 5-digit code format, either hand-postmark or inkjet postmark. In the one French blog Blog philatélie shown al the code of processing centres, and can be found the useage location of postmark 24377A is Oissel, a town in the Seine-Maritime.

The mail was come from one postcard seller, he always uses nice French fauna stamps on his envelope. This time, he selected an Emperor Penguin stamp which tear out from Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers souvenir sheet of 2009. Although the stamp is not real polar theme stamp, the nice illustration about a couple with their children really sound attractive to people.

This is the third cover with the theme Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers, last three are Algeria and Canada.

French DOM collection (4) - Guadeloupe

Front

Purple-throated Carib (紫喉蜂鳥)
France (2005)
2nd December, 2009. Saint-Claude, Guadeloupe
12th December, 2009. Hongkong

Not any surprising, the Purple-throated Carib has been appeared in last mails and they have been shown here, but these mails are sent from France. Now I would show the new one, also the last one in the series of overseas department of France. After this mail, I have collected at least one mail from each overseas departments or territories of France. Please check the link on the right side for other images.

Purple-throated Carib is one of beautiful hummingbird commonly but endemic to Caribbean islands. As same as its name, the throat is in purple-red colour, and body in black. With greenish wings and blueish tail. It is easy to be found in low-land tropical forests or degraded former forest.

After this mail, the 'French DOM collection' is finished. Since prepared on 2 October and received them on 13 December, only 2 months to fininsh this project, and I used 70% French mint stamps of my collection to make the letters in correct postage rate. The very special features of this mail are the Guadeloupe postmark in reddish colour and there have two arrival postmarks of Hongkong.

Back

French DOM collection (3) - French Guiana

Front

Channel-billed Toucan (藍面巨嘴鳥)
France (2003)
21st November, 2009. Cayenne Central, French Guiana

As I need collaborate the production of new book publishing, sorry for about the late update schedule. Here I will present two covers from French Guiana and Israel on these few days of January. French Guiana is a DOM of France, seems it I have been introduced in here before - a species to be found in this South America nation. But different that is the cover really sent from there.

As the last description, the toucan is very normal to be found in the area from Trinidad to tropical forest of Brazil, sometimes may be visible in central Bolivia. There are 4 sub-species be classified and the stamp shown the nominate race R. v. vitellinus one, this sub-species mostly to be found in north-east of South America tropical rain forest.

Back

French DOM collection (2) - Martinique

Front

Blue-headed Hummingbird (藍頂蜂鳥)
France (2003)
30th October, 2009. Saint Pierre, Martinique
10th November, 2009. Hongkong

It is the second mail of this series, in here I would note that the last mail has been collected few days ago so I will post them all in following two months. Martinique is an island located in Caribbean, it is a famous place for vacation in America and Europe. The north of island is mountainous and lushly forested but south is lowland area, thus many wild life species to be found in the north of island.

Blue-headed Hummingbird is endemic to Dominica and Martinique. Same as Mascarene Paradise Flycatcher, it is very common to be found in these islands although it lives in limited area. It mostly habits in subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest.

In front of cover affixed with three stamps, except the hummingbird stamp, two of them also related to Martinique. The left one, issued on 2009 is commemorated a Marinican francophone poet Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) who was was born in Basse-Pointe and death in Fort-de-France, he also was a member of the French Communist Party. The right one, is a panorama of Saint Pierre, the place where the mail be sent. It shown the famous sight Mount Pelée and local catholic church. Saint-Pierre was a primary city of Martinique before the volcano erupted on 1902, this accident cause 30,000 people killed and the capital moved to Fort-de-France until now.

Back

French DOM collection (1) - Réunion

From left to right :
0,46 € : Purple-throated Carib (紫喉蜂鳥)
0,61 € : Blue-headed Hummingbird (藍頂蜂鳥)
0,69 € : Mascarene Paradise Flycatcher (馬斯卡林壽帶鶲)
0,46 € : Channel-billed Toucan (藍面巨嘴鳥)
France (2003)
24th August, 2009. Forum-des-halles, Paris

In April, here had introduced an envelope stamped with French Overseas territories' birds issue, however it only has hummingbird and toucan. After a couple of months, François sent me above cover with whole set of stamps, thanks to his great mail. Of course, this cover seems missing something. During the holiday of October, I started a new project about mails send from all of four French overseas departments - Réunion, Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana. Now I would beginning to show them in four threads, although only two have been turned back, and first one is Réunion.

Front

Mascarene Paradise Flycatcher (馬斯卡林壽帶鶲)
France (2003)
17th October, 2009. Cilaos, Réunion
27th October, 2009. Hongkong

Mascarene Paradise Flycatcher is endemic to area of Mauritius and Réunion, although the bird lives in restricted area, it still have huge population widely to be found in subtropical and tropical moist lowland forest. Réunion is a volcano island located in west Indian Ocean, in the middle of Madagascar and Mauritius. Seashore is tropical rainforest climate for whole year and it suitable for most tropical species, include Mascarene Paradise Flycatcher. Different than seashore, internal of Réunion is mountain climate as the active volcano of north-west elevated 3,060.5m named Piton des Neiges, and Piton de la Fournaise elevated 2,631m is on the eastern side of island.

The mail was sent from a town Cilaos, populated 6,100 inhabitants located in the central of Réunion. As there near Piton des Neiges, a caldera also called Cilaos is not far away from the town. In the May of 1952, there recorded the world greatest amount of rainfall in one day (1,870mm) and keep the record until now.

Back

Joint issue - France and India

L : Gallic Rooster (高盧雄雞) ; R : India Peafowl (藍孔雀)
France (2003)
24th August, 2009. Forum-des-halles, Paris

It is the second time to post joint issue stamps here, the first one was Hongkong, which cooperated with Sweden on 2003. This stamp set, designer illustrated the emblems of these two countries by decorative method - Gallic Rooster (La coq gaulois) of France and India Peafowl of India, and stamps printed in multi-coloured intaglio.

Gallia is the old name of France area which named by Roman Empire (27 BC-395), and also the word gallia means rooster in Latin language. Gallic Rosster became an emblem since the first republic era while it appears on the national flag. India Peafowl is a national bird of India, different then Green Peafowl (綠孔雀), the body is in blue colour. It mainly lives in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. Nowadays, same as Green Peafowl, many of peafowls fed by zoos or peoples.

At last, I would say thanks to François who sent me couple of covers from France, they are very attractive.

J.J. Audubon

L : Band-tailed Pigeon (帶尾鴿) ; R : Snowy Egret (美洲雪鷺)
France (1995)
5th November, 2007. Bercy, Paris

John James Audubon (1785-1851) is a French-American ornithologist and artist, he borne in France but immigrated to United States in 1803. He drawn a lot of drawings of birds and natural when he discovered the colourful field live of North America. Later in 1826, he began to publish his work and popular books Birds of America and Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.

The cover shown here is feature two stamps issued by France to commemorate 200th anniversary of J.J. Audubon's birthday, illustrations are selected from his works. As description of above, all of his works drawn in field area of North America, Band-tailed Pigeon and Snowy Egret are very common species in there.

They are not French

In recent years, France issued couple of stamps illustrate many species can't be found in France continent (as known as Metropolitan France), some of them are endemic to its overseas territories or other place not related to France, here are three of them.

Phorusrhacos longissimus (長腿恐鶴) ; Barau's Petrel (留尼汪圓尾鸌)

France (2008, 2007)
15th July, 2008. Rue de Louvre, Paris

Phorusrhacos (恐鶴屬), actually it is in Latin language, only one species under this genus called P. longissimus. A prehistoric species only can be found in Patagonia, the area include east of Andes and the south of Río Colorado, Argentina. This bird cannot fly and looks like Ostrich (鴕鳥), it is an only bird of prey of Patagonia in mid-Miocene date, but it extinct over 2 millions years.

Barau's Petrel is an endangered seabird range from Réunion and Madagascar to West Australia and Indonesia. Moderately defined "M" mark across wings and with blacked bill. Only 6,000 to 8,000 birds are found in Indian Ocean and the population is decreasing.

California Condor (加州神鷲)
France (2009)
26th June, 2009. Amilly, Loiret
5th July, 2009. Hongkong

California Condor is the largest bird of North America, only lives in Grand Canyon area, California and north part of Baja California, Mexico. It looks black, with widest wings but doesn't have feather on its head, the skin colour can be changed due to its emotion. California Condor can lives near 50 year old and it is one of longest life bird in the world. However, because of illegal hunting, lead poisoning and damage of habitat, population of California Condor is decreasing rapidly since 19th century. Only about 330 birds recorded on December 2008.

Birds in French Guyana

Left : Channel-billed Toucan (藍面巨嘴鳥)
Right : Purple-throated Carib (紫喉蜂鳥)
France (2003)
27th November, 2007. Moselle
6th December, 2007. Hongkong

Sometimes, mails from dealers are only with machine or computer postmark, as they don't know me collect the cover. Above example is one with such oddly French inkjet computer postmark and I needed couple of times to find where did the cover from. Hope I don't have any wrong if it is Moselle's postmark.

Two stamps are illustrated birds live in French Guyana, overseas territory of France in South America. Channel-billed Toucan and Purple-throated Carib are commonly can be found in topical rainforest or the islands of Caribbean respectably. French Guyana is in the south of Caribbean and also north-east of South America, so there is no surprise to find the birds from these two areas.

Grey Heron

Coronelli's globes (文森索 柯洛內里地球儀)

France (2008)

24th November, 2008. Amilly, Loiret

Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718) was born in Venice, Italy. Who was a Franciscan monk and encyclopedist, also known in particular for his atlases and globes. In 1683, his friend Cardinal César d'Estrées present a pair of globes for Louis XIV, one of globe refer to Coronelli's atlases which drew in 1681-1683. The globes made with canvas showing the exploration history of five continents.

The stamp issued by France is commemorate birth of Coronelli 290th anniversary, it illustrated his globes and a Grey Heron (蒼鷺). Grey Heron is very common in the world except America and Australia, some of birds are migrating to central Africa when they live in northern area in summer, but birds in southern Africa will stay there whole year.

Above nice envelope shown the sights of Auvergne, a region in the middle of France. It includes Allier, Cantal, Haute-Loire and Puy-de-Dôme four departments. Thanks Mr. Jean-Pierre who sent me this beautiful cover and cards.