Bond.....James Bond

For the past few days I have been sick.....sick with a bad cold, flu like  symptoms so I missed our Field trip to Barnegat  Lighthouse on Feb 27th.... it was one of those trips that I had marked on the calendar for weeks in advance. Saturday....10am...Barnegat and with the hope of seeing some snow buntings. 

Turned out....I was sick on Thursday....Friday....Saturday...and now Sunday... So no birds for me. The only redeeming part was that the group on  Saturday didn't see any snow buntings, one of my target birds for Jersey that I haven't seen yet. One day....one day.

In the meantime I am stuck on the couch Netflix'ing it and came across a Bond Movie... Bond, James Bond...yeah, we all know of him and how popular Ion Fleming has made Bond, James Bond. Daring, dashing...debonair. My favorite Bond was Sean Connery but I think this latest Bond played by Daniel Craig is an equal.

So Bond and Birds.....how does this connect. Well the obvious is that 'birds' in London mean 'girls'.... My favorite Bond girl was ...well....I like em all. 

But here is a fact... 

Bond...James Bond. Ian Fleming was an avid birder in the late 40's and 50's and he just happened to live in Jamaica at the time of his writing of the first Bond book Casino Royale. He was in need of a character name that was not overly overpowering but 'manly' indeed. His intent was to have one of the most 'ordinary as possible' names for his main character in his book; Casino Royale. Since he was an avid birder and lived in Jamaica, he was very familiar with the local bird expert who had written a book on Caribbean Ornithology, "Birds of the West Indies" published in 1936. The author of this book was James Bond (1900--1989); with his image shown above. Well, the name itself of James Bond fit perfectly for Fleming as it was rather ordinary, but could be 'manly'....  He asked the real James Bond if he cared about the named being lent to his Casino Royale book and Bond just didn't care one way or another, being a true birder. So...Spy-Bond was born from Bond the Birder.

But it doesn't stop there..... In the Bond movie Dr. No, the true Bond's ornithology studies were mentioned in the movie as the villain, Dr. No had a birding refuge in the Bahamas....

Then...later on in spy Bond's movie...Die Another Day, spy-man James Bond can be seen in the movie reading a copy of the book "Birds of the West Indies'... And then later on in the film when the Bond Girl played by Halle Berry, first meets spy-Bond, James Bond introduced himself as an Ornithologist. 

​Anyhow....you can see my 'sick' days haven't been all birdless.... Interesting eh?