Sunday Stamps: 'V' is for voetstap, vogelbekdier and verkeersveiligheid

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is the letter 'V'.

Inspired by Eva's blog post of one week ago, showing a stamp on which voetstappen in the snow were pictured, I wanted to show you one other stamp showing a voetstap.
However, I couldn't find it in time. But luckily suddenly a voetstap stamp has arrived in my mailbox last week! On the back of a postcard which I showed you last week already.

These are voetstappen, also known as footsteps, in the Spanish sand:




A theme of which I can show you plenty of stamps, is 'vogels', 'birds'. Because I couldn't choose from all pretty bird stamps which I have received and which I bought to send out, I decided to show a stamp of a mammal, whose name in Dutch starts with 'vogel', too: the vogelbekdier. Vogel means bird, and bek means beak, dier is animal, so it is a 'bird-beak-animal'.
As many of you know, the vogelbekdier, or platypus, is one of my favourite animals, and I've showed you an other Australian platypus stamp before. This time I like to share this maximumcard, which I am very happy to have in my collection:




Finally a word, related to an important issue: safety first! 'Safety' in English means 'veiligheid' in Dutch. And 'verkeersveiligheid' means 'safety in traffic' (verkeer). Many fatal accidents have been prevented since the veiligheidgordels = safety belts have been introduced, and some more fatal accidents are missing since the use of veiligheidstoelen, special safety car seat for kids, is obliged.
Russian Post has issued this colourful stamp on this theme:




It is safe and in a way obliged, to check today's Sunday Stamps to see what words other mail lovers have chosen for the letter 'v'!

In: from Germany

This beautiful postcard, showing local wildlife, was sent by Margit from Germany.
Of these German animals, the two animals on the rocks - the marmot and the chamois - don't live in the Netherlands, as there are no mountains in our country.

Until receiving this postcard I didn't know that the (North-American) raccoon is living in Europe, too. But a short search in the internet taught me that raccoons have been introduced in 1934 in Germany, and have been introduced later in Germany and France also in some other ways. They appear to feel comfortable here, and have expanded their habitat a little to other countries, too.

The card was accompanied by this matching stamp, issued for the protection of the environment, the Alps in this picture. You can see the marmot again, and the steinbock.



And Margit surprised me with an other great postcard! The platypus is native to Australia, but I am very happy that this platypus traveled from Tasmania via Germany to my home.



On the back a pretty stamp showing the Löwenburg (Lion's Castle) in Kassel.



Thank you very much, herzlichen Dank, Margit!

Sunday stamps: Mammals

Het thema van deze Sunday stamps is 'zoogdieren'. Het liefst zou ik postzegels willen laten zien van onszelf, de mens is per slot van rekening een zoogdier, maar helaas heb ik er geen in mijn collectie. 'Helaas', want het blijft scheef dat voor flesvoedingsfabrikanten ongebreideld reclame wordt gemaakt: op geboorte- en felicitatiekaartjes zie je volop melkflesjes, maar vrijwel nooit een kind aan de borst. Met als gevolg, zo is mijn en anderen hun ervaring, dat veel pasgeboren moeders niet gemakkelijk buitenshuis borstvoeding durven geven, en vaak ook zelfs thuis niet als er anderen bij zijn. Er heerst blijkbaar toch een soort taboe op, en door die onzichtbaarheid vergeten mensen dat borstvoeding gewoon normaal is...
In Nederland zijn niet eens officiële postzegels over 't onderwerp uitgegeven, in tegenstelling tot bijvoorbeeld Luxemburg, Polen (met een voorloper hier), San Marino (ook minstens twee keer, zie hier en hier), Oeganda, Algerije, Guatemala, Griekenland en Nicaragua.

Dus vandaag maar een ander zoogdier op postzegel, een van mijn meest favoriete: het vogelbekdier. Een zoogdier, dat zwemt en eieren legt!
Deze Australische postzegel stond al heel lang op mijn verlanglijstje, dus ik was heel blij toen ik 'm ontving. En sprong een gat in de lucht toen onderstaande envelop in de bus kwam, met nog meer vogelbekdierzegels!

This time the Sunday Stamps theme is 'Mammals'. I'd prefer to show stamps of ourselves: we human beings are mammals, too. The word 'mammal' comes from the Latin word 'mamma' which means 'breast', and the Dutch word for mammal, 'zoogdier', means 'breastfeeding animal'.
But alas I don't have any stamp of breastfeeding people. 'Alas', because I think it unfair that there is a lot of implicit advertisement for the formula industry: on birth- and congratulations cards for newborn children and parents there are a lot of bottles to see, while I hardly see similar cards showing a baby being nursed. To my and other's experience, many newborn mothers feel uneasy when nursing outside home, or even at home in front of friends or relatives. And by the fact that 'breastfeeding' seems to be banned from public views, it has become a kind of taboo. Despite of the fact that mother's milk is the normal feeding for a child, by this invisibility many people forget that...
Here in the Netherlands there never have been issued official stamps showing breastfeeding, while in other countries there are beautiful stamps on the subject, for instance Luxembourg, Poland (previously this one), San Marino (also at least twice; see here and here), Uganda, Algeria, Guatemala, Greece and Nicaragua.

So for today I choose an other mammal, one of my all-time favourites: the Platypus. This nursing hairy animal lays eggs! This postage stamp was on my wish list for a very long time, so you can imagine how happy I was when I received the stamp above from Australia. And I 'jumped a hole in the air' (Dutch expression) when I received the mail you see below, with even more Platypus stamps!