3436 LITHUANIA - A red fox cub

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) it is not only the largest of the true foxes and one of the most widely distributed members of the order Carnivora, being present across the entire Northern Hemisphere, but also one of the world's 100 worst invasive species, due to its ability to adapt quickly to new environments. Despite its name, the species often produces individuals with other colourings. Too small to pose a threat to humans, it has extensively benefited from the presence of human habitation, and has successfully colonised many suburban and urban areas.

0346, 2027, 2227, 2513, 3396, 3412 CANADA (Alberta) / UNITED STATES (Montana) - Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (UNESCO WHS)

3396 Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

The Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is the union of the Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada and the Glacier National Park in the United States. Situated on the border between the two countries and offering outstanding scenery, the park is exceptionally rich in plant and mammal species as well as prairie, forest, and alpine and glacial features. It has a distinctive climate, physiographic setting, mountain-prairie interface, and tri-ocean hydrographical divide.

2027 CANADA - Waterton Lakes National Park -
Prince of Wales Hotel on the shore of Waterton Lake

Waterton Lakes National Park was named after Waterton Lake, in turn after the Victorian naturalist and conservationist Charles Waterton. The park contains 505 km2 of rugged mountains and wilderness, and ranges in elevation from 1,290m at the townsite to 2,910m at Mount Blakiston. Overlooked by the historic Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton Lake is composed of two bodies of water, connected by a shallow channel known locally as the Bosporus.

2227 CANADA - Waterton Lakes National Park - Crypt Lake

Crypt Lake is a pristine alpine lake occupying a cirque that often has ice into August. Most of the area around the lake is covered in scree and/or snow, and hiking around the circumference of the lake requires approximately 45 minutes. The Crypt Lake Trail is one of the premium hikes in park. Wildlife can be spotted in the mountains towering above including mountain goat and bighorn sheep. The slopes along the Crypt Lake Trail serve as primary bear country. From Crypt Lake it is only a short walk to the edge of Crypt Falls with views over the valley below.

2513 CANADA - Waterton Lakes National Park - Cameron Falls

Located in Montana, Glacier National Park includes parts of three sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains (Clark, Lewis, and Livingston Range), with at least 150 named mountain peaks over 2,400 m, over 130 named lakes (from a total of 700), more than 1,000 different species of plants and hundreds of species of animals. Of the estimated 150 glaciers which existed in the park in the mid-19th century, only 25 active glaciers remained by 2010, and is estimated that all the glaciers may disappear by 2020 if the current climate patterns persist.

0346 UNITED STATES - Glacier National Park -
Clements Mountain

Clements Mountain (2670m), located in the Lewis Range, which stands tall over Logan Pass and above the Hidden Lake Trail. The peak was named after Walter M. Clements who had worked to set up a treaty between the Native American tribe Blackfeet and the U.S. Government for the purchase of tribal lands east of the continental divide which became part of the park.

3412

Today, Blackfeet Indian Reservation borders the park in the east. Like other peaks in Glacier National Park, Clement Mountain exhibits a classic "Matterhorn" shape. Foreground is dominated by a plateau covered with a species of monkey-flowers, perhaps Lewis' monkeyflower (Mimulus lewisii), which is native to western North America, from Alaska to California and Colorado.

3399 FRANCE (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté) - The Bread of the Earth

This postcard depict the cover of the book The Bread of the Earth - The Mountain People Tell, by Anne-Marie Prodon, published by Cabédita Publishing House on December 22, 1998. In 25 chapters, 35 peasants and mountain people recount their lives in the first half of the 20th century, in their villages of the Franco-Swiss Jura. Men and women of the earth, attached to their living environment and their heritage, they conducted the same struggle to find the basic necessities for their existence in this arid county subject to the strong winds from the north. Through both funny and tragic anecdotes, they bear witness to a harsh and healthy life that made them robust, tenacious, determined and ingenious to face everyday realities.

2699, 3391 UNITED KINGDOM - Elizabeth II

2699 Queen Elizabeth II addresses politicians and
members of the House of Lords during the
State Opening of Parliament in Westminster.

Posted on 21.08.2016, 25.01.2020
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is, and has been since her accession in 1952, Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and Head of the Commonwealth. She is also Queen of 12 countries that have become independent since her accession: Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

3391 Queen Elizabeth II travelling in Queen Victoria's 1842 ivory-mounted
phaeton drawn by two Windsor Grey horses. The driver is dressed in full state
postillion livery.

Elizabeth was born in London to the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and was the elder of their two daughters. She was educated privately at home. Her father acceded to the throne on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII in 1936. She began to undertake public duties during the WWII, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In 1947, she married Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, with whom she has four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward.

3377 IRELAND - Wild Ireland

Ireland has a particularly strong traditional link with donkeys. From the start of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, donkeys played a key role in rural lives, especially in the west of the country. Jim Smyth wrote an academic review of the history of donkeys in Ireland in 2014, titled The Strange History of the Irish Donkey. He details the main roles played by donkeys in Irish life, including clearing rocky fields, moving turf from bogs, ploughing, transport of people and goods, grinding corn, and finally, for recreation and as family pets.

3376 CAMBODIA - Royal Ploughing Ceremony

The Royal Ploughing Ceremony is an ancient royal rite held in many Asian countries to mark the traditional beginning of the rice growing season. In the various versions of Ramayana, Sita, the heroine appears from the ploughed earth as a baby when Janaka, the king of Videha ploughs the field in the royal ceremony. This is the earliest historical account of this agricultural ritual Sita#Birth. Traditionally, the ceremony is performed in the month Pisak of the Khmer calendar (usually in May, after european calendar), but varies as it is determined by Hora, marking the beginning of the rainy season.

3291, 3299, 3338 GREECE - Authentic Greece (Georges Meis Collection)

3338

 

Posted 13.12.2019, 23.12.2019, 07.01.2020
George Meis studied photography – cinematography in Paris, and then worked as a photographer in the fashion world for five years, during which time he created Meis Studio. The publishing world next claimed his interest, and he published a series of postcards, which presented a different view of subjects and landscapes. His subjects, taken from both mainland and island Greece, evoked international interest and were published in poster size.

3291

The old man in the postcard 3291 wears vraka (a sort of baggy trousers or breeches popular mostly at the islands and the costal part of Greece), and handmade leather shoes called trohadia, which look like sandals.

3299

3288, 3313 ROMANIA (Hunedoara) - The Bison Reserve Silvuț-Haţeg

3313

Posted on 10.12.2019, 28.12.2019

Bison is a type of massive herbivorous animal from the ruminant category, belonging to the Bovinae subfamily, which was once widespread as a wild animal in the northern hemisphere. The only living representatives of the bison are its two varieties, the American bison (Bison bison) and the European bison - the wisent (Bison bonasus). European bison were hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 20th century, with the last wild animals of the Carpathian wisent subspecies being shot in the Białowieża Forest (on the Belarus-Poland border) in 1921, and the last of Caucasian wisent in the northwestern Caucasus in 1927.

3288

 

In Romania, the wisent disappeared in the 18th century; with the last exemplar in the wild being killed in Transylvania in 1790. The species that can be found in Europe at present is a hybrid between the Caucasian Bison and the Lowland Bison. A Caucasian Bison was captured in 1908 and taken to Germany, where he lived 18 years in captivity. There, he bred with females of the Lowland species and produced the species known today as the European Bison. The wisent have been successfully reintroduced in the wild since 1951, and now is found in Poland, Belarus, Romania and Moldova, herds also existing in Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia and Kyrgyzstan.

3300 ROMANIA - Postcrossing Meetup, Bucharest, 17 June 2018

3300 The sixth postcard of the series
"100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (6/12)
- Pelicans in Danube Delta

The previous postcard of the series "100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (5/12)

The sixth meeting of the Romanian postcrossers in the year of the Centenary of the Great Union took place on June 17, 2018, in Bucharest, and Mihnea Răducu chose for the postcard some pelicans, probable great white pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus), in Danube Delta (UNESCO WHS, about which I wrote here). The great white pelican is a huge bird (140 to 180 cm in length) with a 28.9 to 47.1 cm enormous pink and yellow bill, and a dull pale-yellow gular pouch. The wingspan measures 226 to 360 cm, the latter measurement being the highest among extant flying animals outside of the great albatross. It mainly eats fish.

1180, 1181, 3265 ROMANIA (Tulcea) - Danube Delta (UNESCO WHS)

3265 Danube Delta - Flying birds

Posted on 13.08.2014, 24.11.2019
The Danube Delta is the second largest river delta in Europe, after Volga Delta, and is the best preserved on the continent. The greater part lies in Romania (Tulcea county), while its northern part, on the left bank of the Chilia arm, is situated in Ukraine (Odessa Oblast). The modern Danube Delta began to form after 4000 BCE in a bay of the Black Sea, when the sea rose to its present level. A sandy barrier blocked the Danube bay where the river initially built its delta. Probably 40 percent of the Delta was built in the last 1000 years. The reserve is vast, with numerous freshwater lakes interconnected by narrow channels featuring huge expanses of aquatic vegetation. 

1181 Birds of Danube Delta

 

This is the largest continuous marshland on Europe, which includes the greatest stretch of reedbeds in the world, which form floating or fixed islands of decaying vegetation. The Razelm-Sinoe complex to the south comprises several large brackish lagoons separated from the sea by a sandbar. The higher ground supports stands of willow, popular, alder and oak. There are also sandy areas covered with feather grass and other steppe species. Forest elements are best observed in Letea Forest (in the postcard 1180) where a series of bands occur along dunes up to 250 m long and 10 m wide.

1180 Danube Delta - Letea Forest

Situated on major migratory routes, and providing adequate conditions for nesting and hatching, the Danube Delta is a magnet for birds from six major eco-regions of the world, including the Mongolian, Arctic and Siberian. There are over 320 species of birds found in the delta during summer, of which 166 are hatching species and 159 are migratory. Over one million individuals (swans, wild ducks, bald coots, etc.) winter here. An interesting ethologic aspect appearing enhanced by the conditions of the Danube Delta (especially by the floods) is represented by egg laying in common nests. Thus, as a consequence of the general lack of egg-laying places, especially at flood time when a great part of the aquatic-species nests are flooded, the birds this way affected go on laying eggs in alien nests either belonging to the same species or to species of the same families.

3250 FRANCE (Brittany) - A traditional breton farm

The rural architecture of France has a rich variety, because the farms are the expression of the coexistence of several agrarian civilisation, of the variety of natural environments and of types of farming. In Brittany, specific are the long, low, compact houses, with transverse elements. The house and the farm buildings such as stables and sheds, are built in a row under the same roof in the case of small farms, and under roofs of different  of heights in the case of large farms; the house thus consists of juxtaposed units.

3193 INDIA (Assam) - Kaziranga National Park (UNESCO WHS)

Located in the heart of the state of Assam, Kaziranga National Park is one of the last areas in north-eastern India undisturbed by a human presence. The fluctuations of the Brahmaputra River result in spectacular examples of riverine and fluvial processes in this vast area of wet alluvial tall grassland interspersed with numerous broad shallow pools fringed with reeds and patches of deciduous to semi-evergreen woodlands.

3045, 3175 VIETNAM - Hmong people

3045 A Hmong little girl with her bird

Posted on 10.05.2017, 23.10.2017
The Hmong is an ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China (where is considered a sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity), Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. The Hmong began a gradual southward migration in China in the 18th century due to political unrest and to find more arable land. During the first and second Indochina Wars, France and the United States' Central Intelligence (CIA) recruited thousands of Hmong people in Laos, to fight against forces from north and south Vietnam and the communist Pathet Lao insurgents.

3175 Hmong girls with water buffalo in Sa Pa

Following the war, hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees fled to Thailand to seek political asylum. Thousands of these refugees have resettled in Western countries in two separate waves. The first wave resettled in the late 1970s, mostly in the United States, but also in Australia, France, Canada, Argentina, and French Guiana (about the community from French Guiana I wrote here). Others have returned to Laos under United Nations-sponsored repatriation programs. About the communities from French Guiana I wrote here. The second wave resettled mainly in the U.S. since 2004.