In: from Hungary

This wonderful postcard shows a wellknown character. Micu found this card in Berlin, and sent it from Hungary, as you can see on the wonderful stamps:



Manyi Kiss was a Hungarian actress. And bélyegzók pecsétnyomók do mean something like 'stamp' and 'seal', which are favourite themes of mine.
Thank you so much, Micu! Your card arrived in time and I am happy with it!!

Sunday Stamps: Flags or ensigns (2)

Inspired by the Sunday Stamps blog posts by VioletSky, who shared all Canadian province's flags on stamps, and FinnBadger, who made an interesting mail art composition, for which he used the American state flag stamps as postage, I suddenly remembered this stamp sheet.



Issued in 2002 by Dutch Post, in those days still named PTT, this stamp sheet shows the flags of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands, created out of poems/songs about each province.
The stamp edges show something special from the province. For instance the author Annie M.G. Schmidt (well-known by some of you for her 'Jip & Janneke' books but she also made great, critical funny poems) was born in the province Zeeland.
Jan Pelleboer, a man who hosted the weather forecast in his unique way, came from Drenthe, while Fryslân (Friesland) is famous for its ice skates, and the 'Vierdaagse', the international four days walking march, takes place in the city of Nijmegen, which is in the province Gelderland.
And I guess you'll recognize the flag of Brabant now :-)

See more flags on stamps on and via Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: Spineless invertebrates

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Spineless invertebrates'.

As the Snail represents Snail Mail and thus is directly connected to stamps, I would think snails would have been pictured often on stamps. Not at all, though! The only snails I could find were the remains of dead sea snails: shells.
Also in this painting (from the stamp sheet of the Rijksmuseum) you can see a living invertebrate, who is using one of the snail's former houses, a crustacean: the hermit crab.



An other crustacean is the crab who lives in the Wadden Sea, a part of North Sea which has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009. Six years before the Dutch Post (then named TPG Post) issued two stamp sheets on the Wadden Sea. Besides the sea birds and two seal stamps (one of them showed here, too, as a belated addition to last week's theme!) there is one invertebate pictured, this crab:



An other invertebrate, which looks like a plant but in fact is an animal, is the Sea Anemone. What? Did I say Anemone?



I received this pretty stamp from Taiwan some years ago. I've scanned it in case there would be a suitable opportunity to share it. Today I think to be the right day.
All those years I had thought this animal is a sea anemone. Just now, when I looked up the name 'Gymnodorus Ceylonica' I found out... This amazing creature is... a Sea Snail*!...
(* in English the houseless snail is named 'slug', in Dutch both the house-bearing snail and the slug have the same name: slak)


From sea to land: insects!
Butterflies will be theme of Sunday Stamps of 22nd of May, so for today I choose other insects.
Although many people say 'yuk' to non-butterly insects (as I notice on some Postcrossing accounts), insects are an important part of our earth and life. And when seen from closeby, you can see a lot of amazing beauty!

From Korea come these beetles:



From Taiwan these beetles:



And Royal Mail has issued many insects-on-stamps, among them these beetles, bumble bee and dragonfly:





From Sweden this dragonfly:



See more interesting invertebrates on today's Sunday Stamps blog and the links mentioned under today's blog post.

Sunday Stamps: Mammals of the Sea

Today Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Mammals of the Sea'.

Of course it is a delight for me, as I love both animals and the colour turquoise, a colour which appears on many sea animals stamps.

Eva was so kind to send me four sea animals stamps, on three very beautifully decorated envelopes. The complete envelope and stamps you can see on Eva's post of August 2015. Of the four stamps two show sea mammals, of which I like to share this closer look.

The whale (or North Atlantic right whale to be more precise):



The seal:



Also the Dutch PostNL has issued a stamp showing a seal. The seal shown above on the Spanish stamp thrives in warmer seas, and is named the Mediterranean Monk seal, whereas the seal on the Dutch stamp is used to colder waters, and is named the common seal or harbour seal:



By the way, no turquoise in this stamp, but that matches with the usual colour of our sea, the North Sea: grey...

Years ago Dutch Post issued a stamp in honour of the 'Bruinvis' (literally 'brownfish') who in English is named the harbour porpoise.
On this stamp you can see how the number of these marine mammals has been changing since the years. After a bad period fortunately the number seems to have been increased after this stamp was issued.



Two large countries with a lot of sea are the USA and Russia.
From Russia I received this stamp of an orca:



And from the USA these two arrived on one envelope: the manatee:



And the delphin:



See more marine mammals on today's blog post on Sunday Stamps and the links mentioned there.