The Stamp Album

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 32, 30 April 1927, Page 20 (Supplement)

The Stamp Album

“ ORNITHOPHILATELY.”

A STUDY OF BIRDS AND OF STAMPS

PART 11. We now enter the domain of flying birds, and of these the birds of prey have most often appeared philatelically. The arms of many countries axhibit Ihe tortured semblances of eagles, but the only recognisable eagles are on the stamps of the United States, Armenia, Mexico and Austria. The 10c and 30c stamps of 1869, United States, show very well-drawn images of the bald eagle, selected as the emblem of our country in someone’s moment of absent-mindedness. The thieving proclivities of this eagle are well known, and it would have been moie in keeping with our reputation if we had selected the golden eagle, which seems to he the bird shown on a Mexican airplane stamp. This has been drawn from a stuffed bird and may be almost anything. In this connection it may he pertinent to puncture the oft-repeated fable that eagles are blood-thirsty demons capable of carrying off children and vanquishing bears, lions or men. The writer has visited any number of eagle eyries containing both eggs and young, and has yet to see any eagle put up a light, or even voice a protest! The bird shown on a modern Austrian stamp is well drawn and shows a characteristic eagle pose. It may be the white-shouldered eagle. The eagle shown on an Armenian emission is the short-toed eagle, a species common in Asia Minor and notoriously fond of snakes.

Another raptefrial bird, apparently the peregrine or noble falcon, is shown by St. Lucia. This is the falcon par excellence, the bird formerly trained to the chase and the most intelligent of all birds of prey. The swoop of a peregrine is a thrilling sight, and the wanton manner in which he strikes down ducks and other waterfowl right and left is a fitting demonstration of the power of his fists. The 1918 newspaper stamps of Czechoslovakia show another falcon, the kestrel or “wind-hover,” a close relative of our familiar sparrow hawk, which has the same habit of hanging apparently suspended in the air. It has been stated that the birds on these stamps are pigeons, than which nothing is farther from the truth. They are falcons—“sokol” in all Slavonic languages and evidently placed on the stamps as a compliment to the sokols, the quasijnilitary athletic organisations of the Czechs, Jugoslavia shows a fine peregrine falcon portrait. One of the most interesting of the rapacious birds is the vulturine seacagle (Gvpohierax angolensis), figured on a Liberian stamp. The plumage js mostly white, and the bird is a fish catcher, like other sea-eagles, but its face is bare of feathers, like that of a vulture. As true vultures are almost totally' abse.it from Liberia, it is inferred that Gypohierax is a carrion feeder and scavanger as well as a fisherman. The bird of prey shown on Greek occupation stamps may be the short-toed eagle or the picture may be purely allegorical. A known example of the eagle-and-ser.ent allegory is that pictured on many Mexican stamps. This refers to the Nahuatl tradition that the Aztecs were to build their capital where they saw an eagle devouring a serpent while perched on a cactus. This place would be “Tenochtitlan,” and when the war.dering Nahuatli finally saw the prodigy they founded the citadel which is now the City of Mexico. The raptore shown on a Japanese issue is clearly the goshawk, one of the familiar figures in Japanese folk lore. Birds of prey as a rule are savage and intractable creatures, spending their lives alone or, at most, in pairs, and not Jlocklng as most birds do, except In the case of vulturine birds.

Old-world vultures are closely related to eagles, but the only representation is that in the cartouche on an Egyptian stamp. The third glyph from the top.

within the frame, is the griffon vulture, easily recognisable, in spite of the small size, on account of the characteristic pose. This represents the letter “A.” Nev/-world vultures constitute a distinct order of birds the Sarcorhamphida.*, or condors. These are pictured many times on the stamps of the Colombian Republic and Ecuador, and while the drawings are as a rule poor the pose of the spread wings is very typical, and faithfully represents an attitude of condors from Patagonia to California. Our biro is a distinct species, of course, but the descendant of a common ancestor in spite of the immense differences in the two birds which are separated by thousands of miles. This is amply proved by the discovery of the writer, about 20 years ago, that both the Californian and the Andean condor harbour the same parasites, though there has been no possibility of contact of the two birds for untold ages. The parasites, living in the same environment among the feathers, have persisted unchanged, while the hosts have not only become different specifically but generically. “El condor” has recently appeared on a Bolivian commemorative, clutching the peak of Aconcagua and looking toward the Pacific Ocean.

Large as the existing condors are, they arc puny compared with Teratornis, a recently-extinct type found in the Brea deposits near Los Angeles and which must have measured a good 25 feet across the wings and is thus the greatest Hying bird which has existed. Water birds are not so often portrayed on stamps, but the first avian centrepiece, the black swan, occupies the medallion of all the stamps of Western Australia from 1854 to 1901 and of nil subsequent issues except the high values from 2/- to £l. There seems to have been no intention of advertising what had he 2n considered a “rara avis in terris” up to that time: the first settlements w r cre on the Swan River and the bird was chosen as the badge of the colony. The first stamp was appropriately in black, but this also was without design, except to copy the colour of the first stamp of Great Britain. Black swans are declared to be the most graceful of birds, and a pair of these beautiful creatures moving calmly over the water, ruffling their plumes and occasionally “conversing” in low' tones, is a sight worth going a long distance to see. A white swan is figured by French India. This show’s the great god Brahm sitting on the swan which produced the egg from whence proceeded creation. Geese are pictured on two Chinese stamp designs. In Chinese symbology the goose typifies the faculty of communication,' as did the cranes of Ibycus of Greek fable. Gulls are idealised on several Estonian designs. Gulls arc related to plovers, the only one to be shown on a stamp being the “teru-teru” on recent stamps of Uruguay. This latter bird is a lapwing and the most characteristic bird of the South American pampas. Probably the most charming of all bird descriptions refers to this bird, and is found in Hudson’s “Argentine Orthinologv.” Pigeons, which are also related to gulls and plovers, are shown on the Japanese Peace Issue. The alliance of pigeons with gulls has only recently been proved, but anyone who has seen pigeons gleaming on the shore must have noticed a strange similarity of habit.

A grbup of birds which superficially resembles gulls is that containing the petrels, fulmars and albatrosses, technically the Tubinares, as the nostrils are prolonged to a form resembling t->e twin barrels of a shotgun along the top of the beak. So similar to gulls, these birds are the result of homoplasv. A similar environment has mads them similar externally, while they are structurally far apart. of fim'lv are birds of