Category Archives: New Issues

New Caledonia – 2020 Christmas Stamp

19/12/2020 Gilly Christmas Leave a comment

Masked Booby

Issued 4th November 2020

This new permanent value international postage stamp was designed by Thierry Mordant, an artist who has created many illustrations and various postage stamps for New Caledonia, France and the Principality of Monaco. On this new stamp, two masked boobies (Sula dactylatra) wearing Christmas beanie hats are engaged in the vital task of carrying traditional seasonal gifts from the shores of New Caledonia.

These large seabirds are both striking and graceful, with their white and black plumage, yellow beaks and black masks around beak and eyes. They are quite rare within the area covered by New Caledonia’s lagoon. Masked boobies prefer to nest on remote islands and islets (Carey, Chesterfield, Entrecasteaux, Matthew and Hunter), and are expert freefalling plunge divers. They can plunge dive into deep water from a height of over 30 metres to pick off prey from schools of fish or catch large squids!

Recent Bird Stamps from Bosnia Herzegovina (BH Pošta)

23/11/2020 Gilly Christmas Leave a comment

Prosecuting Peacocks?

One of the consequences of the Coronavirus situation is that I am spending more time at home than I might otherwise do, primarily to “keep safe”. Naturally, this is proving difficult to do, because I am eager to explore the county of Dumfries and Galloway, which is now my new home.

I was sifting through my new bird stamps from Bosnia Herzegovina that had just arrived, when on the radio, I hear a story about five peacocks that have roamed the village of Henfield (West Sussex). The police had allegedly threatened these peacocks with death, following complaints from some villagers about the impact of the peacocks on gardens and property. A rival group have got together to save the birds from extinction and to provide a more permanent home, to avoid them roaming the streets and gardens of the village. Ordinarily I would not have been at home to hear such a story. Coincidentally, one of the stamps that I had in front of me when the radio blared out this story was the 27 March 2020 BH Pošta issue of a peacock (Pavo cristatus) in a miniature sheet format, as below:

New Issues

Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola Peruvianus)

27/10/2020 Gilly Christmas Leave a comment

Browsing through the New Issues catalogue that I receive quarterly from Yvert & Tellier, I came across this new definitive stamp issued by Serpost, the postal authority for Peru, featuring the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola Peruvianus).

There is an immediate curiosity about this stamp: in the Yvert new issues catalogue, on the left-hand side of the stamp is the name of the printer (CARTOR) and the printing date (2019).

On the right-hand margin is a serial number: 06062. The stamps featured both on the free stamp catalogue website and on the bird theme website also share these characteristics. In contracts, the images below, from the official Serpost website, don’t show these features. That may just be a characteristic of the publicity information issued by Serpost for this stamp, both of the stamp and of the First Day Cover (dated 13 January 2020).

The stamp value at 1.20 Sols is worth around £0.26, which makes me wonder if this is a make up value or has a particular postal use on its own. Unfortunately, the tariff pages on Serpost are not available as I write this article, so I will have to do some follow up research later.

To read Steven’s full article, click h ere

Bird Stamp Society