Considering how successful Skyfall, the newest James Bond movie, is right now, we’d like to remind you of 007’s ornithological origins…
James Bond the birder by Ilana DeBare
The real James Bond was a birder!
You may already know the serendipitous story of how the world’s most famous fictional spy was named for a Caribbean ornithologist. I wrote a bit about this back in 2006 when I wrote a review of Bond’s classic, A Field Guide to the Birds of the West Indies. However, Ilana DeBare at Golden Gate Audubon put together a much more comprehensive and fascinating review of the Bond-bird connection. Check it out!
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.
Here’s another bizarre connection between Skyfall and birds: they apparently used one of my Barn Swallow recordings as part of a viral marketing campaign for the movie: http://wikibruce.com/2012/10/secret-agents-and-bird-calls-a-skyfall-adventure/
It was quite surreal when I stumbled upon that on the interwebs.