I was sent large images of these stamps by a friend in Malaysia. At the time, I hope they were genuine stamps that were going to be issued, but anything from Tanzania was a surprise! While the Taita Falcon has appeared on a Zambian stamp, the other species are new for my collection.

There are two glaring errors on the stamps: on the 500/- stamp the genus is spelt "Taulaco", and the word "Sunbird" is missing from the 300/- stamp.

Also, the sunbird seems to be the wrong species. In Ber van Perlo's "Birds of Eastern Africa", Anthreptes rubritorques (14) is shown as having a whitish throat, but the bird on the stamp has a green throat and more closely resembles Green Sunbird (Anthreptes rectirostris) (13). Really, it does not look much like a Sunbird!

Another curious feature of this set is the way the currency is shown. In every other Tanzanian stamp I have seen, the Shilling is shown as "/-", but in this set it is shown as "/=".

My correspondent has informed me that the date of issue for this set was 27th November, 1999.

Update 9 August 2001: This set has at last become widely available through usual suppliers, and now includes a miniature sheet showing the Blue Swallow (Hirundo atrocaerulea) which is a scarce breeding species in south-western Tanzania. Unfortunately, there is a spelling error on the stamp.

The Tanzanian postal authority is to be congratulated on this locally produced set for the excellent choice of species. I hope there will be more sets like this but that the proofs are checked by local ornithologists.