Old postcards Birds

The birds in this section are Soviet postcards printed between 1981 and 1985, most of them devoted to a single species. Alongside familiar subjects such as the jay, an owl and a kite, there are birds that rarely appear on postcards at all: the chukar partridge, the isabelline wheatear, Pallas’s rosefinch and the rufous-tailed rock thrush. Africa is represented by Crowned Cranes (1985).

Azure-winged Magpie (1984) shows a bird of East Asia, found from the Baikal region to China, Korea and Japan. The magpies of the Iberian Peninsula, at the other end of the continent, were long treated as the same species but are now generally regarded as a separate one, the Iberian magpie. Fork-tailed Gulls (1985) are Sabine’s gulls, which breed on Arctic coasts and tundra and are usually placed alone in the genus Xema. Demoiselle Crane (1984) is the smallest of the cranes, a bird of steppes and semi-deserts rather than marshes.

The earliest card is Jay, from 1981. The Eurasian jay buries acorns for the winter and in doing so has long helped oak woods spread. The hoopoe on the 1982 card is easy to recognise by its fan-shaped crest and long, thin bill, and the 1985 crossbill by its crossed mandible tips, an adaptation for prising seeds out of conifer cones.

With mountain, steppe and Arctic species next to woodland birds, this run of vintage postcards reaches well beyond the usual garden birds.