(NOTE: This meeting and presentation took place online, via Zoom platform technology, due to social-distancing protocols prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic)
At 7:00 pm, President Ken Chaya called the meeting of the Society to order. He introduced himself and thanked the attendees for joining the meeting. He said that as of the current moment, 246 people were watching the meeting live and thanked the LSNY officers, council members and committees for their continued work and support.
He then gave a shout-out to his team of fellow officers, and council and committee members. He first recognized the officers and members of the council by name: Vice President, Rochelle Thomas; Secretary, Lydia Thomas; Recording Secretary, Amy Simmons; Treasurer, Ruth Hart; Editor, Jonathan Hyman; and Council Members, Marie-Claire Cunningham; Kathleen Matthews; Ursula Mitra; Sherry Felix; Mary Jane Kaplan; Bruce Yolton; Mary Beth Kooper; Vicki Seabrook; and Gabriel Willow. He then thanked committee members and chairs as well as a few others: Stephen Chang of the Awards Committee; Chuck McAlexander of the Constitution Committee; Jonathan Hyman, Editorial Chair; the Field Trip Committee of Miriam Rakowski, Mary Beth Kooper, Deborra Mullins, Anne Lazarus, Vicki Seabrook, and Maire-Claire Cunningham; Gabriel Willow of the Field Observations Committee; Kathleen Matthews, for Membership; a special thanks to Kathleen and volunteer, Erika Piik, for their valuable work in posting LSNY announcements to social media; Rochelle Thomas for lining up our Speaker Programs; Bruce Yolton, for developing the LSNY website and keeping it up and running; and finally, Tom Burke, for his devoted and continuing management of the Rare Bird Alert.
President Chaya noted that tonight marks our sixth speaker meeting taking place live and online, and that it is still unknown when the Society may return to presenting its programs in the Linder Theater at the American Museum of Natural History. Until then, we will continue to bring our programs online on a monthly basis.
Because the Society’s membership had recently voted online via email, there were only three business items on the agenda.
The first item was to announce the result of a vote on the approval of new members. It passed with 103, votes of approval and none of disapproval. President Chaya then welcomed the following nine individuals as new members:
- Judith R. Gordon, Associate, sponsored by Lea Kouba
- Cynthia Roberts, Supporting, sponsored by Ken Chaya
- Susan Steinbrock, Active, sponsored by Ken Chaya
- Richard Davis, Active, sponsored by Kevin Sisco
- Michelle Talich, Active, sponsored by Crystal Thiele
- Leslie Day, Active, sponsored by Ken Chaya
- Shreyas Gupta, Life, sponsored by Miriam Rakowski
- Dianne McKeever, Life, sponsored by Miriam Rakowski
- Erica Rooney, Active, sponsored by Dolores Brandon Thompson
He then invited non-members in attendance to join the Society and explained that they could do so by visiting the LSNY website, www.linnaeannewyork.org. Additionally, he said that he or any of the LSNY officers listed on the website would be willing to sponsor anyone who would like to join, emphasizing that an organization is only as healthy as its growing and diverse membership. He also emphasized that the LSNY welcomes all to become members regardless of race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, background, geographic location, or “even the number of bird species you have on your life list!” saying, “We would love to hear from you, and to welcome you to our community of birders and nature lovers!”
The second item on the agenda was to announce the result of a vote to approve the minutes from the January meeting. It passed with 104 votes of approval and none of disapproval.
President Chaya reminded members that although we have been meeting on Zoom since September, this is still an official meeting of the Society. And as such it is still a forum for topics of interest to our membership. If anyone has a topic or announcement under the item of new business that they would like to propose, they may send either him or the secretary a note by email.
The final item on the agenda was the announcement that next month, at our Annual Meeting, taking place on Tuesday, March 9, we will be presenting a slate of officers to be voted on by the membership. Voting will be handled electronically as we have been doing for the past 6 months. All members will receive an email from President Chaya immediately following the meeting asking to return their votes on the Officers within 24 hours.
If there are any nominations from the floor, the names of candidates must be submitted to Secretary, Lydia Thomas, no later than midnight, February 23. Secretary Thomas may be contacted via email at secretary@linnaeannewyork.org or by US mail addressed to our PO Box at the LSNY, PO Box 801, New York, NY 10024. Both of these addresses can be found on the website under “Contacts.” Such nominations must include the name and email of any candidates and the office position they are nominated for. Each nomination from the floor MUST be accompanied by 15 member signatures which can be submitted electronically by including the name and email address of each signing member.
The live, online Annual Meeting will only be open to Linnaean Society members. The evening’s presentation by Peter and Rosemary Grant on their study of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands, will be recorded and will be made available for public viewing on our website at a later date. All of the information on the Annual Meeting related here has been recently emailed to all members in the February President’s Letter. Another invitation to the Annual Meeting will be forthcoming to all LSNY members in another week or two.
At 7:13 pm, President Chaya introduced the evening’s speaker, author Jim Wright, who is the author of The Real James Bond, the story of the ornithologist/author who was the victim of the greatest identity theft in history. Although Bond, who wrote the landmark Birds of the West Indies in 1936, is now mostly a footnote for 007 fans, he lived a life of great accomplishment.
He announced that Jim’s illustrated talk would cover Bond’s life and career, with special mention of ornithologists who were spies, most notably the American Museum of Natural History’s James Chapin. Jim will also talk about three Bond specimens in the AMNH collection: Saint Lucia Black Finch, La Selle Thrush, and Bahama Nuthatch (now feared extinct).
Immediately after the presentation, Caribbean ornithologist Dr. Joseph Wunderle will join Jim to discuss Bond, current conservation efforts in the West Indies, and more. Not only did Joe know Bond, but he once met Sean Connery in the Bahamas and was suspected of spying in Grenada in 1983.
Jim began his talk by sharing a photo of a program from the April 11, 1944 meeting of the LSNY, when James Bond was the featured speaker. Jim then showed a copy of his new book which features on the dust jacket an image of the fictional James Bond character in a man’s suit with the head of a Cuban Green Woodpecker. Remarking that this was “not the first time that James Bond posed as a bird,” Jim showed a clip from the 1960’s movie, “Goldfinger” which featured the character James Bond sneaking into a marina at night by swimming underwater using an underwater breathing apparatus hidden within a gull decoy. As Agent 007 emerged from the water, the decoy gull was prominently strapped to his head – prompting Jim to quip that “this is where the term ‘gullible’ comes from.” He then showed a few illustrations from the book and a quote about it from bird writer Julie Zickefoose: “If the real James Bond does nothing more than convince readers that an ornithologist can be something other than proper, stodgy or dull, then it will have done the world a great service.”
Jim then showed a photo of the ornithologist – and ‘real’ – James Bond (1900-1989) commenting that he actually did look a bit “nerdy.” Bond grew up in a well-to-do family in Philadelphia. His mother was a Roebling of the Roebling family who built the Brooklyn Bridge. The death of his older sister when she was seven and he was four led his family to move to the country from Philadelphia. Shortly after moving there, his mother died. His father then married a widow from London and moved there with Bond and his brother. In London, he attended Harrow and then Trinity College. After college, he became a banker in Philadelphia. However, he soon realized that he hated banking and was interested in pursuing ornithology. Not long after, he came into a small inheritance and determined that if he was frugal and careful, it would provide just enough income for him to pursue his passion. His first job was at the Academy of Natural Sciences, but the position was unpaid. As a result, when the Great Depression happened, he wasn’t let go.
Early on, Bond decided to pursue his life’s work in the West Indies. When he first arrived, he traveled on foot and horseback and stayed in local huts, sleeping in a hammock. In 1934, he spent time documenting the Zapata Rail and others endemics. Eating rodents, employing arsenic for the curing of bird skins and using a double barrel shotgun to collect specimens, Bond collected three different specimens for the American Museum of Natural History: the La Selle Thrush, the Bahama Nuthatch and the St. Lucia Black Finch.
When he visited Haiti in 1929, he set out to find the rare La Selle Thrush, which is superficially visually similar to the American Robin. To collect it, he had to travel by horseback for 20 miles and sleep in a hut. To collect the Bahama Nuthatch he traveled by rum runner. When he arrived, one of the local islanders let him stay in his hut and Bond was able to collect two specimens of this previously undescribed species. Jim remarked that now, following two hurricanes in the past five years, this bird may be extinct. Bond took two trips to St. Lucia to collect several St. Lucia Black Finch, including the first two females ever collected. Upon returning to the United States and visiting Jim Chapin at the AMNH, Bond boasted, “I collected a genus you don’t have in the AMNH,” prompting Chapin’s colleague, Frank Chapman, to immediately write to request one for the museum’s collection.
Bond’s life’s work, “Birds of the West Indies” was published in 1936 by the Academy of Natural Sciences and remained in print for more than six decades. Jim reported that an early version, signed by Bond, recently sold for $5,000 at auction.
Jim stated that while doing research for his own book, “The Real James Bond,” he was surprised by how many ornithologists worked for the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency) during World War II. Speaking of the connection between ornithologist and spies, Jim played a recorded narration from the book “Cloak and Dagger” which described how ornithologists had many of the same skills and attributes required of successful spies. For instance, both share an ability to recognize and identify elusive and hidden subjects, both are able to live in foreign countries as outsiders without being ‘strangers,’ both know their way around firearms, and both carry and utilize surveillance equipment.
Speaking of one ornithologist who is now known to have been a spy—Jim Chapin—Jim Wright said he made a name for himself when he went to the Belgian Congo at age 19 while a student at Columbia University. After spending six years there, in 1936 he came out with a four-volume set, “Birds of the Belgian Congo.” At outbreak of World War II, he was recruited to be a spy there and joined the OSS. At the time, the Belgian Congo held the world’s richest supply of uranium and the Allies wanted to keep it out of hands of Nazis. They were successful and this uranium went on to be that which was used by the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb.
Jim then questioned whether or not Bond was a spy. Although his research turned up nothing confirming or indicating that he was as spy, Jim did find one interesting circumstance that gave him pause: prior to the outbreak of WWII, Bond traveled on the state-of-the-art SS America to the Caribbean. As Bond was notoriously frugal, and this voyage would have been extremely expensive, Jim did some further research and discovered that at least two members of the Duquesne spy ring were then working as crew members on the ship. Wondering if Bond may have been a spy, after all, Jim wrote to the CIA to as if there was any connection but the organization responded that it could neither confirm nor deny any. In short, the ‘jury is still out’ on this matter.
After WWII, Bond married in the same year as Ian Fleming, who was then in Jamaica writing “Casino Royale” and needed a name for the book’s secret agent character. Jim then played a recording of a later interview with Fleming where he is asked how he came up with the name for this character. Fleming stated, “I just pick-up names driving through the countryside…I wanted to find a name that would have no romantic association of any kind…one of my bibles, here, is “Birds of the West Indies” by James Bond, so I stole it.” As Fleming never told Bond that he did this, it took about a decade for the James Bond character in his books to reach America. It wasn’t until an article listed Fleming’s “From Russia With Love” as one of John F. Kennedy’s favorite books that word started to spread. It was at this time that Bond and his wife began receiving prank phone calls and that led to them learning of the “theft.” – Mary Bond wrote to Fleming accusing him of stealing her husband’s identity. Fleming responded with “yes, you caught me” but invited the couple to visit him if they ever came to Jamaica. A few years later, they did just that – dropping by, unexpectedly, at Fleming’s home, “Goldeneye.” Initially, Fleming was nervous that Bond might be there to sue him but when Bond assured him that he was not, saying, “I don’t even like your books,” Fleming relaxed and he and his wife entertained the Bonds. Before they left, Fleming gave Bond a copy of his new book, “You Only Live Twice,” and signed it to “the real James Bond,” dated 2/5/64.
After the film “Goldfinger” came out in 1964, all things 007 became hugely popular, which led to annoying experiences for Bond. For example, when he discovered a specimen of the thought-to-be-extinct bird, the Eskimo Curlew, instead of giving it the respect that such a finding would typically receive from scientific journals, the popular media instead had a field day with James Bond puns and jokes about it (i.e., “New Bond Thriller: Case of the Curlew”) The association between the ornithologist and the fictional spy only increased after Fleming’s death. In the movie, “Die Another Day,” actor Pierce Brosnan (who played James Bond) is seen carrying a copy of “Birds of the West Indies” and spying on Halle Berry’s character through pair of binoculars. When she asks what he’s doing he says “I’m an ornithologist – I’m just here for the birds.”
Jim went on to say that this was a shame, as Bond deserves to be more than a footnote to the 007 story, and listed many of Bond’s contributions to science: He collected rare eggs for science, including Harpy Eagle eggs; he formulated “Bond’s Line,” drawing a line north of Trinidad and correctly insisting that the birds of the Caribbean originated from North America and not South America, as was then assumed; he popularized the birds of the West Indies for generations of travelers, and he was a champion for the protection of birds there. Although he collected specimens to benefit science, he did not want to shoot more than necessary—even to the extent that he was criticized at the time. He was
very far-sighted about protecting birds in the West Indies and, as early as the 1930’s, was writing about his concerns about habitat destruction and the parrot trade and the need for bird sanctuaries. He recognized that “…there is no doubt that the principal factor that has resulted in the extinction or rarity of so many West Indian birds is man.”
He closed his talk by inviting attendees to visit his website: realjamesbond.net, saying that the proceeds of its sale of autographed books would go to BirdsCaribbean, a regional non-profit dedicated to the conservation of Caribbean birds and their habitats. He then introduced Joe Wunderle who is on the board of BirdsCaribbean, and is the editor of BirdsCaribbean’s journal, the Journal of Caribbean Ornithology. He has researched birds in the West Indies for four decades.
Jim showed photo of Joe in Eleuthera, Bahamas where he was doing study of Kirtland’s warbler. Alongside him were two Bahamian student interns and a field assistant. Joe said that while BirdsCaribbean does conservation and science, it also trains young conservationists and focused on building local capacity to bring about conservation in the Bahamas.
Jim asked Joe about the current status of the Bahama Nuthatch in light of two, recent major hurricanes, including Hurricane Dorian, which was a Class 5 hurricane. Joe said that destruction was considerable to the islands’ pine forests and that while he is not optimistic about the species’ survival, the Caribbean is remarkably resilient. He is hoping it is still there, but it has not seen yet been seen.
Joe said that he met “the real James Bond” when he was a graduate student. He had been working on a field project in Central America on the relationships between hummingbirds and species such as bananaquits and it was recommended that he speak with Bond about where to work in the Caribbean. Bond told him about a black bananaquit in St. Vincent and Grenada saying that nothing was known about it and suggested he do research there.
Joe went on to tell a story of how in 1981 he was briefly mistaken for a spy while doing field work in Grenada. At one point, he was detained in a room with a group of Cubans and was able to discuss the birds of Cuba with them. They were amazed by what he knew, and the Grenadians eventually decided he was harmless and released him. What he knew of Cuban birds was thanks to James Bond’s book.
Jim asked what was currently the greatest threat to birds in the Caribbean and Joe responded that it was habitat loss. One of the factors driving this loss is the big push for economic development and, on the coasts, resort development. Another threat is the lack of awareness by locals and, on some of the French islands, hunting can still be a bit of an issue.
When asked what viewers can do to help birds in the Caribbean, Joe encouraged them to come down to the Caribbean and see the birds, once COVID-19 is no longer a danger. When doing so, visitors should use local guides and support eco-tourism.
8:03 pm—Vice-President Rochelle Thomas thanked both Jim and Joe and facilitated the Q&A portion of the program.
8:18 pm—Vice-President Thomas passed the floor back to President Chaya, who also thanked Jim and Joe. He concluded the program by saying that he hoped all LSNY members would join next month for the annual meeting and that everyone else would be back for April’s meeting when the evening’s program will feature a private screening of the documentary “Full Circle,” about the Great Gull Island Project, with a talk by Executive Producer Anne Via McCullough.
8:19 pm—The meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted by Amy Simmons, Recording Secretary