The IGPC website does offer a few opportunities to explore what I have termed incongruous bird stamp issues. Some of these are reviewed in this article.
Inca Tern (Larosterna inca)
On 16 May 2019, Guyana issued a set of five stamps that celebrated the Inca Tern. Both the souvenir sheet, which features the $800 value; and the four stamps printed in a second sheet (with values of $100, $300, $500 and $700) are impressive in the design and quality of the photographic images. A worthy addition to the global catalogue of bird stamps, I would have thought.
But there is, of course, a clue in the title. The American Bird Conservancy website – where the Inca Tern featured as bird of the week back in 18 July 2014 – describes the usual habitat of this bird as being along the Western edge of South America, from Peru all the way down to Chile. Its territorial range doesn’t stray much beyond that coast. That is because its natural food source is in the cold waters of the Humboldt [or Peru] Current that flows northwards from the South Pacific Ocean up the Western coastline of South America.