Bird stamp

Since the advent of manned flight, postal services have used birds as a common illustration for air mail stamps.[1]

A bird stamp is a postage stamp that illustrates one or more birds. It is a popular theme in topical stamp collecting.[2]

Birds started appearing on stamps by 1875, when Japan issued a series of three stamps bearing stylized illustrations of the three species Motacilla alba, Accipiter gentilis and bean goose.[3][4] The first United States bird stamp, depicting an eagle with wings outspread, was issued in 1911 to pay the registration fee and were not valid for regular letters.[5] The UK issued its first in honor of "Nature Week" in 1963.[3] As of 2003, over 10,000 bird stamps had been issued around the world.[6]

A prominent collector is Chris Gibbins whose collection of over twelve thousand stamps portrays about three thousand species.[2] Organisations that cover this field include the American Topical Association and The Bird Stamp Society.[7]

References and sources

Notes
  1. ↑ Esten, Sidney (1941), "Birds on Stamps", Stamps, 35: 20
  2. 1 2 Koeppel 2006, p. 14.
  3. 1 2 Malcolm Ogilvie, "Birds on Stamps", Birds of Britain: The Monthly Web Magazine for Birdwatchers, March 2002.
  4. ↑ "1875 Bird definitive stamps of Japan". colnect.com. Retrieved 2015-11-18.
  5. ↑ Aeschliman, David H. "US Stamps: Registered & Certified Mail". Stamp-Collecting-World. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  6. ↑ Stanley Gibbons catalog listing for Collect Birds on Stamps 5th Edition Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
  7. ↑ "The Bird Stamp Society brings bird stamp collectors together". The Bird Stamp Society. 2015. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
Sources

External links

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