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IAN FLEMING FEATURE Licensed to thrill With the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die, arriving in early April, now’s a good time to take a closer look at the birds of Ian Fleming and 007 WORDS: JIM WRIGHT Red-billed tiful bird in Jamaica, and irdwatchers who love Ian The most beau Steamertail Fleming’s thrillers know he some say the most beautiful bird in the stole the name for his secret world, is the streamertail or doctor agent from the dust jacket of humming-bird. The cock bird is about nine ornithologist James Bond’s Birds inches long, but seven inches of it are tail of the West Indies . Not as widely known: – two long black feathers that curve and Bwild birds often play integral roles in cross each other and whose inner edges are Fleming’s spy novels, and he depicted them in a form of scalloped design. The head and with a knowledge and affection seldom seen crest are black, the wings dark green, the in most mainstream fiction. long bill is scarlet, and the eyes, bright and Take the author’s favourites, the confiding, are black. The body is emerald hummingbirds of Goldeneye, his winter retreat green, so dazzling that when the sun is on on the north shore of Jamaica. Fleming planted hibiscus and bougainvillea to attract a trio of the breast you see the brightest green thing endemics – outlandish Red-billed Streamertails, in nature. shimmering Jamaican Mangos and tiny Vervains . GHT I WR M I Ian Fleming, “For Your Eyes Only” J The streamertails clearly fascinated Fleming. He wrote about them twice. In addition to opening the short story For Your Eyes Only, they make a cameo appearance in Live and Let Die: “Like dangling emerald pendants the two hummingbirds were making their last rounds of the hibiscus.” Ramsey Acosta, the long-time gardener at Goldeneye, says another Fleming favourite was the Jamaican Nightingale , better known as the Northern Mockingbird. Jamaican Mango S COURTE BOND, CKHAM WI ARY M RICARDO MIller/ A I H P LADEL I PH OF RARY LIB REE F THE OF Y ARROWHEAD BIRDING T IGOR STEVANOV JACK HOLLOWAY I Ian Fleming (right) c/ A OURS meets James Bond LAMY 26 March 2020 birdwatching.co.uk 27 FEATURE IAN FLEMING Northern Mockingbird BOND V BOND S COURTE A I H P LADEL I PH OF RARY LIB REE F THE OF Y JIM WRIGHT Acosta says Fleming loved how the bird sang at twilight. No surprise, then, that the thriller-writer used it to help set The real James Bond (1900-1989) and 007 a scene in both For Your Eyes Only and shared much in common. Both were tall, Live and Let Die , writing in the latter that lean and part Scottish. Both were “a mocking bird had started on its graduates of British public schools evening song, sweeter than [an English] (Harrow for the real Bond, Eton for nightingale’s, from the summit of a bush Fleming’s character). Both loved to travel of night-scented jasmine.” to exotic locales and to spend their winters The streamertails and mockingbirds in the Caribbean. Both smoked cigarettes, stand out for another reason – unlike though the real Bond, who preferred to be M most birds in Fleming’s fiction, they live ARK called ‘Jim’, later switched to a pipe. Both C to vocalise another day. Goldeneye Villa, Jamaica OLL drank hard liquor. And both were skilled in I N Later in For Your Eyes Only, Bond S the use of firearms. Secret Agent 007 travels to the United States and watches preferred a Beretta and later a Walther through the telescopic sight of his Savage pivoted sharply. He took his heel against innocence and nature. It also FLEMING USED THE SLAYING OF A BIRD AS PPK; Jim Bond, a double-barrelled rifle as the villainous Von Hammerstein away and wiped it on the grass beside foreshadowed more death and destruction shotgun. One huge difference: Jim Bond suddenly kills a Belted Kingfisher in a the heap of feathers. The others stood – but more on that a bit later. A DRAMATIC DEVICE TO PROVIDE A spent much of his career shooting birds burst of machine-gun fire: round, laughing and applauding The first of the bird killings came in DRAMATIC DISPLAY OF EVIL WITHOUT and studying them. In contrast, Fleming’s “The kingfisher, a handful of tattered obsequiously. Von Hammerstein’s red Live and Let Die , his second 007 novel: SHEDDING HUMAN BLOOD 007 never killed a bird and was disgusted blue and grey feathers, thudded to the lips grinned with pleasure.” “A pelican, grey with a pale yellow when a villain did. lawn and lay fluttering. Von Hammerstein, Fleming used the slaying of a bird as head, was hunched on one of the mooring smoke still dribbling from the snout of his a dramatic device to provide a dramatic posts on the end of the jetty. He let them wings and planed down towards the water. The Brown Pelican hunts so skillfully tommy-gun, walked a few steps and put display of evil without shedding human [Bond and Leiter] get very close, then The two men stood and watched him that it avoids casting a tell-tale shadow in bored. ‘As you know, it’s bird dung. the heel of his naked foot down and blood. The killing symbolized a crime reluctantly gave a few heavy beats of his flying slowly along just above the order to surprise its prey. The Robber, in Comes from the rear end of two birds, the surface of the harbour. Suddenly he contrast, simply blasts his quarry out of masked booby and the guanay. So far as crashed clumsily down, his long bill the sky – for the hell of it. Crab Key is concerned, it’s only the Roseate Spoonbill JIM WRIGHT snaking out and down in front of him. It In Dr. No, the sixth 007 novel, lots guanay, otherwise known as the green Kling-Kling Bird at came up clutching a small fish which he of birds and tons of bird guano play cormorant, same bird as you find in Goldeneye moodily swallowed. Then the heavy bird supporting roles. Bond is sent to Jamaica England. The guanay is a machine for got up again and went on fishing, flying to investigate the disappearance of two converting fish into guano. They mostly mostly into the sun so that its big shadow MI6 staffers and discovers suspicious eat anchovies. Just to show you how much would give no warning. ... goings-on on Crab Key, owned by Dr. fish they eat, they’ve found up to seventy “The Robber looked briefly up, Junius No. anchovies inside one bird!’” narrowed his eyes and pulled the trigger. Fleming most likely forgot to consult his The pelican gave a faint squawk and they Guano mine Birds of the West Indies when he wrote heard its heavy body crash into the water... Half the island is an Audubon that passage. A more likely candidate was “‘Why the hell d’you do that for?’ asked sanctuary where the Roseate Spoonbill the double-crested cormorant. Bond’s Bond furiously. population has dwindled. (“Looks like description begins: “General color glossy “‘Practice,’ said the man, pumping a sort of pink stork with an ugly flat bill greenish black.” another bullet into the breech.” which it uses for digging for food in the The good news for the cormorants – N WAT N I KEV If you want to portray a villain as mud,” Fleming writes.) whichever species they were – was that no S wicked in four paragraphs without The other half is a guano mine: villains were around to shoot them. As for ON JIM WRIGHT torturing humans or kittens, the above “‘Now then, guano.’” Pleydell-Smith the man behind the deaths of the passage provides a textbook example. tilted his chair back. Bond prepared to be spoonbills, Dr No later gets his just deserts 28 March 2020 birdwatching.co.uk 29 FEATURE IAN FLEMING FEMMES OF A DIFFERENT FEATHER U N I TED A RCH I VE S G Claudine Auger played Domino M BH / Vitali in Thunderball, 1965 A LAMY Although ‘bird’ is the by-now hackneyed term for the attractive women who JIM WRIGHT Turkey Vulture, or Turkey Buzzard, or John Crow populate Fleming’s novels, the thrillers featured two of these human birds. Both women were beautiful femme fatales (spoiler alert), when 007 commandeers named for birds of the West Indies. a guano-loading machine and buries him Domino Vitali ( Thunderball) was alive under a load of bird droppings. D named for the Common Yellowthroat , ORL I That’s justice far more poetic than Dr. NG once known in Jamaica as the Domino KI No’s demise in the 1962 movie version. NDER Bird because the black feathers around its In the film, Bond boiled him alive in S eyes resemble the domino mask so LEY LTD/ J I a nuclear reactor. M WR Goldeneye Villa popular with comic-book heroes and A LAMY Brown Pelican I seen from the sea carnival-goers. Room filled with tension GHT U N I Fleming saved some of his finest bird TED A descriptions for his final 007 outing, The ruffle themselves up to almost twice squashed toad or a dead bush rat. The RCH FLEMING SAVED SOME OF HIS FINEST BIRD I Man with the Golden Gun , written in early their normal size.” circling buzzard had found its offal. It VE S G DESCRIPTIONS FOR HIS Final 007 outing, M 1964.

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