The name was Bond, James Bond. Bond was an American ornithologist whose name was borrowed by Ian Fleming, a twitcher himself, for his spy hero 007. The original Bond possesses another fame, being author of Birds of the West Indies . First published in 1936, this was, and is, the definitive guide to birds of the Caribbean. Yet even Bond’s knowledge and the artistry of the illustrators, struggles to pin to the page the beauty and variety of the birds that inhabit the tropical waters, islands and continental land masses framing the Caribbean Sea.

The Caribbean is a birder’s paradise, not merely for its birdy bounty, but for the singularity of its avifauna. Of the 700 or so species in the Caribbean, 185 are endemic and found nowhere else in the world. Of these endemic birds, 110 Caribbean b

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