Paradise birdwing (Ornithoptera paradisea) /male - beautiful butterfly postage from Zazzle.com

Paradise birdwing (male) - beautiful butterfly postage from Zazzle.com

My philatelic friend Jean-Michel Maes (jmmaes at http://www.myphilately.com ) is an avid Belgian entomologist, currently living and working in Nicaragua.

He said that the Paradise Birdwing is one of the most beautiful butterflies in the world.

I have created a stamp and dedicated it to him (read the text on the stamp design!).

Zazzle initially rejected my design because it had the word STAMPS on it.

I fixed the "problem" by saying PHILATELY, instead. :)

Notice how I created a stamp border with a matching color. :)

The point for you, my reader here and now, is that (almost) any stamp can be created WITH A DEDICATION, TOO, unless you violate some policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithoptera_paradisea

The world's largest butterfly: Queen Alexandra's Birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae) - WWF maximum cards from Papua-New Guinea

The above image shows the male of Queen Alexandra's Birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae).

The above image shows the female of Queen Alexandra's Birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae).

They are as big as some birds, and they fly like some birds - but they are butterflies!

"Birdwings are papilionid butterflies native to the Indian Subcontinent, mainland and archipelagic Southeast Asia and Australasia, and are usually regarded as belonging to three genera:Ornithoptera, Trogonoptera and Troides. Some authorities include additional genera. The exact number of species is debated, but most recent authorities recognize between 30 and 40. Birdwings are named for their exceptional size, angular wings, and birdlike flight."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdwing

The females of Queen Alexandra's Birdwing are bigger than the males.

Here's an image of a female:

Hovercraft:

"Courtship is brief but spectacular; males hover above a potential mate, dousing her with a pheromone to induce mating. Receptive females will allow the male to land and pair, while unreceptive females will fly off or otherwise discourage mating. Males are strongly territorial and will see off potential rivals, sometimes chasing small birds as well as other birdwing species."

No more shotgun approach:

"The species is also highly prized by collectors, with illegally traded specimens selling for thousands of dollars. Although collectors are often implicated with the decline of this species, habitat destruction is the main threat. Early collectors, frustrated by the height at which adults fly during the day, often used small shotguns to down specimens. but because collectors demand high quality specimens for their collections, most specimens are reared from larvae or pupae."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Alexandra's_Birdwing

White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) on maximum cards from USA, Romania and Netherlands Antilles

I created this non-FIP maximum card with a real photo postcard.

I shot it (the photo, not the deer :)... ) in the Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, USA. 

At arm's length, from my car, as this doe came to see if I have any food for her.

"The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), also known as the Virginia deer or simply as the whitetail, is a medium-sized deer native to the United States (all but five of the states),Canada, Mexico, Central America, and in South America as far south as Peru. It has also been introduced to New Zealand and some countries in Europe, such as Finland and the Czech Republic."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_deer

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I'll add later other maximum card images.

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In Romania there is no wild population of white-tailed deer, but there was a stamp series honoring/celebrating/"exploiting" the fauna of the arctic region. Just as so many countries issue stamp with giant panda, when there is NO connection with the local fauna. :)

"In Valerius Geist's book Mule Deer Country he explains that by testing the mitochondrial DNA of the three species (blacktail, whitetail and mule deer), researchers have now determined that it was the mating of whitetail does [DOEs] and blacktail bucks that gave rise to the mule deer, and not the opposite as was once suspected, therefore not falling under a subspecies of O. hemionus and rather as its own species O. columbianus.^[2]"

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-tailed_deer}

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