My Little Chickadees

This stamp was sent to me from Denise in Canada decorating a postcard, which it did perfectly with stamp and cute border design. One of the 2004 set of John James Audubon wonderful bird paintings. The Canadian postal authority were originally going to photograph from the printed book but the particular black ink used intensified and became muddied so they went back to the original watercolours held by the New York Historical Society (purchased from Audubon's window in 1863) to produce these beautiful stamps.

Audubon painted Canadian birds during two separate journeys north. In 1831 he travelled to the Newfoundland coast before sailing to Europe. In the summer of 1833 he returned to the north shore of the Saint Lawrence and its islands and estuaries, once more to coastal Newfoundland then Labrador, Cape Cod and Nova Scotia.

The Boreal Chickadees live in coniferous woods living mainly in insects and seeds, foraging in flocks as Audubon portrays.  As they live in Canada, Alaska and parts of the US so I have never seen them but can through this stamp and I can travel via the  Xeno Canto site of bird songs and hear them chirp on this sound file:

An entry for Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps.