Stamps of Tristan da Cunha: Finches (2014)

Tristan’s finches traditionally were called buntings, given their resemblance to the buntings that were familiar to the early European explorers and collectors that first visited the Tristan islands. However, we now know that they are derived from South American finch-tanagers, which makes sense given that their ancestors were carried to the islands by the prevailing westerly winds. Recent studies have confirmed that the Gough Finch arose from a separate colonization event, and is more closely related to the two species of Melanodera finches from Patagonia and the Falkland Islands than it is to the finches at Tristan. As a result, it is sensible to retain it in its own genus, Rowettia, named after John Quiller Rowett, the sponsor of Shackleton’s last expedition, which called at Gough in mid-1922 after Shackleton’s death.