2012 Flora & Fauna Series $2 coin

New $2

Diameter: 24.50mm| Thickness: 2.05mm | Weight: 6.0g | Edge Type: Plain 

Shape: 11 Sided Point-to-Side

The front design features a Ga ni vatu (Peregrine Falcon). The Peregrine Falcon is one of the world’s best known ‘birds of prey’. Fiji has a distinctive subspecies – nesiotes – or ‘the islander’. This subspecies is the darkest and according to many, the most handsome of all the Peregrines worldwide. For Fijians, the Ga ni vatu has a powerful mystique which stems perhaps from a now largely forgotten legend of a fabulous Ga ni vatu from the Yasawa Islands. In Fiji, the population of the Ga ni vatu is less than a hundred pairs and is believed to be declining. The back design features a Tanoa (kava bowl) introduced in the 1700s, and which came into widespread use in the mid nineteenth century.