Happy birthday, James Bond, who would have turned 124 today. No, not that James Bond, the British spy character created by Ian Fleming, but the actual James Bond — the Philadelphia-born ornithologist who wrote the unsurpassed “Birds of the West Indies” (1936) and a was a widely recognized expert on Caribbean birds. In fact, the fictional Bond’s name was taken from the actual Bond’s name, as Fleming was an ardent birdwatcher and spent much of the second half of his life at his Jamaican estate Goldeneye, where he began writing “Casino Royale” in 1952 (and where he wrote every Bond story thereafter). The real Bond (pictured, in 1974) didn’t learn of his name’s appropriation by Fleming until well into the early 1960s and was reportedly bemused by the whole thing. The men met only once in 1964 at Goldeneye, when Bond and his wife decided to surprise the author at home. Reporting on the visit for Smithsonian Magazine, Jim Wright said, “Once Fleming was assured that Bond wasn’t there to sue him, the two authors got along famously.” Image by Jerry Freilich, CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED.
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