St. Helena & Ascension 5-PENCE (KM3)¶
-
Reverse: SANDERLING (Sandpiper)
-
Obverse: Queen Elizabeth II
- Composition
- Copper-nickel
- Country
- St. Helena
- Approx. Size
- 23.5mm
- Area
- Oceans
- Animal Class
- Birds
- Species
- Sanderling
- KM#
- 3
The Krause catalogue refers to the bird on this coin as a "Rainpiper" but I can't find evidence that such a bird even exists (even as a nickname for another species). The only other references on the web to Rainpiper or Rain Piper are probably quoting Krause.
After consulting the Birds of St. Helena list on Wikipedia, I am going to go out on a limb an say this is a Sanderling, which is a kind of Sandpiper.
St. Helena¶
- Area
- Oceans
Saint Helena is a very tiny island almost 2,000 km of the west coat of Africa. Its dependent, Ascension, is a burnt out volcano located over 1,000 km north-west. Saint Helena was first found by the Portuguese in 1509. They planted fruit trees, vegetables, and left a lot of animals, but didn't hang out themselves. The Dutch and British squabbled over the island around 1673, but as usual Britain won out. Meanwhile, Ascension was pretty much ignored but today has a population of over 1,000 people who live with lots of sea turtles and birds. Their main source of income is phosphates and bird poo. Meanwhile, back at Saint Helena we find a parade of trouble-causers who got kicked out of other places, including Napolean, some Zulu chiefs, and an ex-sultan of Zanzibar. In 2005 the Jehovah Witnesses reported amazing success on Saint Helena with approximately 1 in 29 people signing up, the highest ratio in the world.
