First day cover with four gummed stamps affixed.
$2.90 Toboggan travel - With their waddling and flippery form, penguins seem built for laughs. But beneath the comical charm lies serious design. To move faster across snow, they toboggan: belly-down, flippers out. This penguin sprint is surprisingly swift, and it saves energy on long hauls to the ocean to feed.
$4.20 Swim champ - Penguins can’t fly but in water they are fast, agile and built for the deep. The ocean is their sky. Engineers even study their movements to design better amphibious vehicles and underwater propulsion systems. Penguins can release air bubbles from their feathers, reducing drag and allowing them to rocket out of the water. Beneath those tuxedos beat the hearts of elite endurance athletes.
$4.70 Joy of the free-dive - Penguins still surprise us, like the recent discovery of Adélie penguins leaping off high cliffs into the sea. Antarctica is vast, remote and unforgiving, making it difficult for scientists to observe these birds up close. Instead, they often rely on satellites to track penguin colonies, sometimes locating them by the tell-tale stains of guano on the ice.
$5.50 Toddler waddle -
Fluffy, wide-eyed and tottering on oversized feet, emperor penguin
chicks are born into one of the harshest nurseries on Earth. But these
babies are more than lovable to look at; they are vital sentinels of
Antarctic ecosystem health. A sentinel species acts as an early warning
system, sensitive to changes like warming temperatures, pollution or sea
ice loss.
This stamp issue showcases the ways Antarctica’s Adélie and emperor penguins get around their home.
Like humans, they walk upright. Unlike most birds, they cannot fly. Seemingly clumsy while on land, their acrobatic talents come to the fore as soon as they reach water. New Zealand scientists have been tracking the wellbeing of Ross Sea penguin colonies for over 40 years, including taking an annual penguin census.
The 2025 Ross Dependency stamps showcase the ways penguins get around their home.
Issue date: 1 October 2025