Sunday Stamps: Fish in the water

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Fish in the Sea (or lake, or ocean)'.

First I thought it would be hard to find fish stamps, but wandering through my received mail, there appeared to be more than one Fish stamp!

The first fish I would like to show is a fresh water fish, the pike ('snoek' in Dutch).
This fish stamp is from the United Kingdom (thank you, John!):



I have an old Dutch stamp sheet which shows a pike, too, but alas I can't find it to scan for you at the moment. Fortunately you can see it somewhere else on the internet. That stamp sheet was issued in 2005 and showed flora and fauna in the Naardermeer ('Lake of Naarden'), the oldest protected nature area in the Netherlands.
Recently, ten years later, the Dutch post issued a new stamp sheet on this lake. This time a ten stamps sheet, of which the bottom two show underwater life. Among them the pike again:



From the lakes in the countries at the North sea to some more southern European sea, close to Spain. Eva sent me fish mail (not to be confused with fishing mail :-) ) and on the cover were two sea mammal stamps, and two fish:



A stamp from the far south. In the South African sea beautiful fish are living. Among them this one:



And from the south to the far east. I was so lucky to receive some Asian fish stamps.

From China:



From Taiwan:



From Sri Lanka:



And finally, a stamp from the Netherlands, showing an Indonesian fish:



More interesting and beautiful fish stamps you can see on the Sunday Stamps blog and the related links mentioned there!

In: from the Sea

The Sea is an interesting phenomenon. Eva sent me several Sea items from the sea Spain, of which I am posting three different ones right now.



Above you can see a wonderful stamp showing the sea, seen from the air.
There won't be Sea without Land, as you can see also on this stamp: below the airplane the Canary Islands archipel is visible.



Bottles containing messages are frequently sent by people. Sometimes they arrive on the beach, brought to Land by the Sea, to be found by other people.
My home town doesn't have sea close by and I don't go to the beach often, so the chance for me to find a message in a bottle is almost zero. Fortunately Eva knew a good alternative to send her bottled message to my place: the mailmen, who travels by bike and/or car over land. So I finally found a bottled message in my mailbox!



Last but not least, and I received this card in July already, aeas contain wonderful flora and fauna. Fish, mollusc, mammals. All kind of animals. And mermaids, of course. This card shows our marine friend Salina, and the beautiful lighthouse.

Thnak you very much, moltes gràcies, Eva (and Salina)!

In: from Japan

In Japan so-called Gotochi ('local') cards are issued, shaped cards showing nice illustrations.

I was happy to 'meet' Tomoko from Japan via instagram. She wished to receive Jip & Janneke cards, which I sent to her, while I was delighted by the picture of this Japanese Mailbox 'Summer' card, which she sent to me!

On the back she added a delightful serie of Japanese nature stamps.



Thank you very much, Tomoko, arigato!

In: from Macau

Natalie did a short trip from Hong Kong to Macau. Despite of the short time she was there, she was so kind to surprise me with this great postcard! It shows the General Post Office in Macau.

On the back no stamp... But at least a postmark, and that is nice, too. And it makes me know how to write 'Macau' in Chinese characters.



Thank you very much, Natalie!

In: from Scotland

An interesting story! And I didn't know, or at least didn't realize, that Dutch people crossed the North Sea and even traveled far north to Scotland in the Middle Ages, 500 years ago!

So I learned, thanks to John, who was very close to this octagonal house recently, and who sent me some more very interesting postcards from Scotland.



I didn't know before either that the Scottish have issued their own national (international) stamps. This one shows Loch Ness, and thanks to John I also learned there are more stamps showing the Saltire.

Sunday Stamps: Lighthouses

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Lighthouses'.

There are two persons to whom it always is a pleasure to send lighthouses to, both on postcards and stamps. In turn, they make all received lighthouses accessible for us via the internet. So you can check wonderful lighthouse stamps, in the great online photo album of Eva, and on Ravindra's lighthouses on stamps blog.

Fortunately the Dutch mail has issued several lighthouse stamps last year. Four of them were available via post agencies and online, and besides that, there's a serie issued on subscription. I'll show you the four accessible ones:

My favourite picture is this one, the 'Paard van Marken', because it shows what a lighthouse is meant to do: give light at night!



Another fave is the Brandaris, on the Wadden Island of Terschelling. It is the oldest lighthouse in the Netherlands:



And there is the more 'common' lighthouse of the Wadden Island of Texel. Saying 'common', I mean, if someone would ask me to draw a lighthouse, it probably would look like this one:



Or like this one, the Westerlichttoren in Haamstede in the province Zeeland:



Some years earlier, a single lighthouse stamp was issued, but alas the price, 7 euro, was far beyond my spending limit. Fortunately this great stamp can be seen online.

The following stamps have been issued in the nineties, before the euro was introduced:




Outside the Netherlands there are many more, beautiful lighthouse stamps. As said, you can see lighthouse stamps on Eva's and Ravindra's websites, but also be sure to check VioletSky's blog post of today, and all links under her post.

Also I was lucky to receive some lighthouse stamps from other countries.

John sent me some most beautiful postcards of lighthouses from the United Kingdom. Fortunately he put some awesome English lighthouse stamps on the back, too, and I love to share them with you:





These American lighthouse stamps I received from my dear old great-uncle, who went to Arizona in the fifties. Only a few years ago the two of us discovered that the other loved stamps, so since then we are exchanging stamps every now and then. Alas he and my dear great-aunt had to move to a smaller house recently, and now he has no room for his collection anymore. He has been so kind to donate stamps for youth education, you can find more information about this 'youth education thru stamps' project here.



Also other kind people sent lighthouses:

From Vietnam:



Australia:



Germany:



Croatia:



Finally back to the Netherlands. The lighthouse-at-night on top also has been pictured at daylight. Be it not on a stamp itself, but as a background to this stamp sheet on traditional clothing:

In: from Greece

Besides turquoise I love bright green and bright, lemon-coloured, yellow. How did Eva know that?
Great card of a lemon tree and a - to my opinion - interesting, inspiring background on the Greek island Sifnos.



Also the stamp shows fruit!
Thank you very much, Eva!