Songbirds are predominantly members of Passeriformes, wood habitants in the forest, capable of producing harmonious sequences of sounds that are perceived by humans as songs. There are more than 5,000 species in the world common in all countries. Most of these birds are migrants, but there are also resident ones, who do not leave their usual inhabitations for the winter. They feed on insects and spiders, seeds, berries, fruits and grains of plants, and flower nectar. They live in nests, in pairs, keeping typically to flocks; they are not afraid of people and always settle nearby. About 300 species of songbirds live in Russia. The commonly known and most beautiful of them are a bunting, a kinglet, a jay, a robin, a chaffinch, a siskin, an oriole, and a greenfinch.
A song of a black-headed bunting is a quiet, inarticulate "ti-ti-tiuriuri" with a stress on the first syllables; the contact call is no singing, but rather two-syllable twittering.
Contact calls of gold-crested wrens, which can be heard quite regularly and by which these birds are usually found, sound like short, very high-pitch and relatively quiet cedarcedar-cedar-cedar-cedar-stichi-see-pee signals, sometimes united in a short warble.
A jay is distinguished for its vociferousness and a variety of sounds produced. Most often, one can hear a loud and cracking rattle, as well as a shriek imitating a buzzard. It can sing a soft and complicated song.
A robin’s song is very uneven in tempo and volume, with loud clear warbles alternating with hushed unintelligible twittering, with "metallic" notes or almost hissing and wheezy sounds.
The postage stamps provide images of a black-headed bunting, a gold-crested wren, a jay and a robin.
In addition to the issue of the postage stamps, JSC Marka produced First Day Covers and special cancels for Astrakhan, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Sevastopol, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, as well as maxi-cards and an illustrated envelope with postage stamps, a label and a First Day Cover with a cancel for Moscow inside.
Design Artist: N. Karpova.
Face value: 25 rubles.
Stamp size: 42×30 mm, sheet size: 108×148 mm.
Emission form: a sheet with formatted margins with 8 (2×4) stamps.
Quantity: 70 thousand stamps each (35 thousand sheets each).
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