Sunday stamps: Animals in the wild

This time the Sunday Stamps' theme is - like many other themes - a favourite of mine: animals in the wild.

One family of animals I admire for both their beauty and for something we, humans, are not able to do: birds!
Bird are able to fly (except for ratites of course). So caged birds I always think sad. While watching birds fly in the wild always makes me smile and provides a sense of freedom.

This great flying tern stamp I received from South Africa.
By the way, a flying tern is in the logo of the international bird protection organization Bird Life, and also in the logos of several partners, among them the Dutch and South African bird protection NGO's.



Love the way the stamp has been postmarked across. As if it is to show how high a bird can fly :-)

The following stamps show the contrast between a caged bird and birds in the wild:



Well, the caged bird isn't on a stamp himself, but is part of a larger stamp sheet, of which the stamp shows an other freely flying species.
The godwit (grutto in Dutch) is a bird who thrives in the grass-land. Grass-land birds have been, and still are, threatened by intensive farming in our densely populated country. Fortunately there are several initiatives to help farmers combine farming with nature protection (but still it's not enough, I am afraid).

Other flying birds are these wild ducks, beautifully pictured on a Finnish stamp. This bird is common in many countries.



To my pleasure I see that both Violet Sky and Joy have posted Australian stamps. In Australia some of my all-time favourite animals are liviung: the echidna, the platypus, the kookaburra, the cassowary and the brushturkey. The last-mentioned I've never seen on a stamp, the others I did see.
Among them this kookaburra:



And, my favourite stamp (which I fortunately received more than once!), the platypus:



Some other wild life, tiny ones:



However, the words 'Animals in the wild' will make most people think of larger animals, mammals to be specific.

Animals in forests and nature reserves, from Belarus, Russia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands (the latter is a personalized stamp, temporary issued by natuurlijkefoto.nl):











Wild animals like elephants....



... and lions (this is from a stamp sheet showing more animals, that is, silhouets):



And arctic animals, alas endangered, too:



Check Sunday Stamps for more animals-in-the-wild stamps!

Sunday stamps: Mushrooms, Fungi

The theme of Sunday Stamps of today is 'Mushrooms, fungi'. Useful creatures, most of the time overlooked and sometimes considered revolting, but I think they're always interesting.

They have been depicted on postage stamps in various countries, check for instance Violet's blog and the links mentioned under her post of today. And Eva drew our attention to a weblog which completely is dedicated to mushrooms on stamps!

However, so far I only received one: this Fly agaric ('Vliegenzwam' in Dutch) on a beautiful Canadian stamp.



The fly agaric of course is wellknown for its use for housing and as seats for gnomes. However, the toadstool below seems a bit too small for this tiny fellow (and the coffee pot too big!..).
This stamp has been issued in 2008 by the Dutch mail (named TNT then) as an international stamp (worth € 0.75, while seven years later international postage has been raised to € 1.15). More gnomes in this serie you can see on this website.



Also in 2008 the Dutch post issued a nice stamp sheet to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Dutch Mycological Society. The sheet contains ten stamps, showing five different mushrooms: a 'young' version and a 'grown-up' one. It's very interesting, because it shows the variety in growth of mushrooms.

I thought I had the complete sheet, but I appeared to have used all of them except for two (which I plan to use for a mail art project on mushrooms). Below you can see the two ones left. The complete set you can see on the Filahome website and especially on the stamps blog, on which nice detailed pictures of each stamp are shown.

This is the 'Inktviszwam' or 'Octopus stinkhorn':



And here again the Fly agaric or Fly amanita, with in the stamp sheet's edge from right to left the development of an other mushroom, the Ink cap:



Two years later, in 2010, the Dutch post (still TNT Post then) issued a stamp sheet themed 'Long live the Forest', to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Royal Dutch Forestry Association. Also of this sheet I haven't the complete version anymore (you can see the complete sheet on the stamps blog), but fortunately I kept the bottom part so far, and indeed there are mushrooms, not only on the forest floor, but also on this stamp sheet 'floor'!



Finally I would like to show you two very tiny types of mushrooms / fungi.
These are part of a stamp sheet containing ten pictures of different microbes (I blogged about it before, see the last picture of this post). The stamp sheet was issued in 2011 (TNT post was changed into PostNL then), to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Netherlands Society for Microbiology.

This fungus is the Aspergillus niger, which helps to produce compost:



And this beauty has been discovered in 1928 to be life safening: the penicillium (or Penicillium chrysogenum to be exact):



Don't you think the fact that fungi obviously are related to at least three different associations / societies, proofs that fungi are ubiquitous and play an important role in many different stages and parts of life?

Sunday stamps: fruits of the forest

We have been away this weekend, so I wasn't able to scan and post my contribution to Viridian's Sunday Stamps on Sunday. Fortunately - possibly thanks to the time zone differences - I still could post, now that in our part of the world Monday has begun.
This Sunday's theme is 'Fruits of the Forest: Nuts and Berries'.

The first stamp I love to share is this one from Finland. The berry is called 'kruisbes' in Dutch, or 'kroezel' as my friends from the very south of the Netherlands say, in the dialect of Limburg. The Finnish name sounds intruiging to me: 'Karviainen', while in English this berry appears to be 'Gooseberry'.



And lucky me, a colleague happened to have several stamps from Turkey and gave them to me.
There is a serie about berries, of which Viridian already showed my favourite one: the Blackberry, 'Braam' in Dutch.



I think the berries of the 'Pyracantha' or 'firethorn' ('vuurdoorn' in Dutch) are not suitable to be eaten by us, humans, but they're a welcome meal to birds like the blackbird:

Sunday stamps: Geology and Landscapes

This Sunday Stamps' theme is Geology.

I choose the 'Bos atlas' stamp sheet, issued in 2012. The Bos atlas is a Dutch world atlas, named after Pieter Roelf Bos, the teacher who started this atlas in 1877.

It is not only a map / geographic atlas, but it also learns about culture, landscape, economy and geology of the different regions. So it's not only about what's above the ground but also what's in and under.

On the stamp sheet you can see very early publications and more recent editions (bottom left the 54th edition). And it's interesting to see how everything has been changing all over the years. Some for the better, some for the worse.



When reading 'geology' I'm thinking of minerals, stones. And thinking of my dear late grandmother, who collected minerals. After her passing away, many years ago already, I got some of the minerals which I cherish.

I've been looking for more Dutch stamps on geology but they seem to be rare. Maybe because our country has more to do with agriculture. However, many years ago in the south-east of the Netherlands, mining industry flourished, and on the internet I found this stamp of a mine worker obtaining coal.

Fortunately Viridian also included 'Landscapes' in the theme of today, and below you can see some Dutch landscapes. Mainly cultivated...