Sunday Stamps: 'Z' is for zee, zeeschelp and zwemmen

We made it! In 26 weeks the owner of Sunday Stamps posted stamps of all 26 letters from the alphabet, and she made us - Sunday Stamps and Mail Lovers - do the same! Congratulations to all, and many thanks to Violet, thank you for hosting Sunday Stamps so carefully!

So, the last letter of the alphabet is 'Z'. In English pronounced as 'zea', in Dutch we name this letter 'zet'.

The first stamp I want to share with you is about the zee, sea in English. Zee is pronounced as [zey] or [zay] like in 'hey' and 'hay' (is there any difference in pronounciation between hey and hay? - I don't hear it!..).
And the letter Z is not only for zee, but also Zeeland, literally 'sea-land', which is the name of the province in the zuidwesten - south west - of the Netherlands. The country New Zealand is named after this province.



Last week this province was in the news and some historical movies were shown on television, because of a sad anniversary: in the night of 31 January - 1 February 1953 the North Sea Flood took place, and this flood took the lives of many victims.
This was the start of a dike protection plan, the so-called Deltaplan, to construct the Deltawerken (Delta Works). The construction took many years, and finally, in 1986 the main parts of the Deltawerken were finished. This stamp has been issued in 1986 in honour of the Deltawerken. The text says 'Deltawerken voltooid' ('Delta works completed') but in fact it was the main parts which were finished, and in 1986 the Oosterscheldekering was inaugurated. Finally, after more than 40 years of construction, in 1997 the last part of the Deltawerken was completed (which does not mean the end of all construction works: nowadays one has to maintain it!).
So, on this 1986 stamp you can see a part of the zee, a part of Zeeland and the forementioned part of the Deltawerken.

The province Zeeland is famous for the mussel cultivation (including selling / eating). I couldn't find a stamp showing a mussel, but today that is no problem as 'mossel' doesn't start with a 'z'. But fortunately I found a look-a-like, which at least is a zeeschelp - a sea shell, on this pretty stamp bwhich Eva has sent to me from Morocco:



One activity we can do in the zee is zwemmen (to swim). You also can do it in a zwembad (swimming pool), and some people make a match of it - zwemsport (swimming sports).
Coincidentally this 'chaincard' arrived back to me recently, after having been traveling to Thailand, Taiwan and Russia, where kind stamp lovers added stamps showing zwemmers (swimmers) to my card (and I added the Dutch zwemsport stamps to theirs). This is the result:



See what other 'Z' themed stamps others have found at and via today's 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.