Åland - Sea Birds

On  2nd of January, 2000   Åland released a booklet on WWF-stamps. The motif for the booklet is the colourful sea bird Steller's Eider (Polysticta stelleri). All stamps in the series are decorated with the famous logo for the World Wildlife Fund WWF, the black and white giant panda. The   species is nowadays very rare in Westerns Europe. The Steller's Eider normally breeds along the Sibirian coast of the Arctic Ocean, in Northern Alaska and partly even in north-eastern Norway. At the same time small flocks of the Steller's Eider are regular winter guests in the Baltic Sea and particularly on Åland.  The bird's strange name is believed to come from the fact that it is considered to betray the Long-tailed Duck.  Traditionally the bird is the first one to arrive at the breeding places and warns about the arrival of the Long-tailed Duck.

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