Five stamps, five ages: white down, grey-brown feathers, and finally the yellow beak.
In 2026 the Postal Service honours the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), the national bird since an Act of Congress adopted it on June 20, 1782 — an emblem of freedom, courage, strength and power that still stands at the centre of the Great Seal, and in the Postal Service's own logo. These stamps follow one bird's growth rather than showing a single portrait. The first has an adult's head in the corner, dropping food to two downy hatchlings; the second, two four-week-old eaglets sitting upright; the third, a one-year-old in greyish-brown; the fourth, a two-year-old whose head is turning white; the fifth, the adult, white head and neck, bright yellow beak. Illustrator David Allen Sibley, in his first project for the Postal Service, wanted to show that “the familiar adult eagle has already lived for at least four years.”
You will never look at an eagle on a lamppost the same way again.
PERFECT FOR: nature journals, letters to birders, classroom life-cycle lessons, gifts for park rangers, and a five-stamp sequence framed in order.
