22 October 2019
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Let’s have a look at this year's Europa stamps depicting song birds, also known as ‘passerines’.
One of the best known of this family is the robin. In the 1960s The Times newspaper conducted a poll to find the national bird of the UK, and the robin flew to the top. Sadly Royal Mail are not taking part in this year’s Europa issue, so we must look further afield for a robin, namely the issues of Portugal and the Spanish Post Office of Andorra.
In the same family as the robin, we find the blue rock thrush which is the national bird of Malta. It was already on several stamps of this island and also on the former one Maltese pound coin.
Song birds on stamps
The Azores and Madeira, also issued by the Portuguese post, show respectively a Goldcrest and an Atlantic canary. Meanwhile, in the tit family, the paridae is also an important part of the passerines. The well-known great tit and blue tit are the birds chosen by the Croat post of Bosnia.
Germany went for a couple of yellowhammers represented in a nice old fashioned stamp. And the Netherlands opted for nice watercolours depicting a bohemian waxwing and a goldfinch. The latter bird is also part of Guernsey’s Europa issue.
QUICK LINK: Bird stamps of years gone by
