When Ian Flemming was writing about the heroic 007 of ‘Casino Royal’, whilst in Jamaica, in the 1950’s, he was searching around for a name for his famous hero. His eyes lighted on a book, ‘Birds of the West Indies’, by none other than James Bond. Thus you will therefore now know, that one of the most famous names in spy history was in fact a real name of a person who spied. Whether, like Ian Flemming, James Bond spied on people, is perhaps lost in the memories of those that knew him, but he certainly spied on birds. You will see 007 with a copy of this book in his hands, in Cuba, during ‘Die Another Day’!

We have been doing a bit of spying on birds ourselves. Glossing over the pictures of semi naked females we showed you in the Carnival in our last letter, we thought you might be interested in some of the feathered variety of birds that we derive so much pleasure from in Antigua. These are by no means all of the birds that one can see here, but we hope to send you another set of pictures when we have crept through the bougainvillea bushes and around sugar stoops a bit more. We also have a number of pictures of the fauna of Antigua, which we will send with another letter.

Our first snap is of the magnificent frigate bird, which we know has been mentioned in one of our previous letters. The frigate bird, however, only has two nesting colonies in the world. The first is in Barbuda, which is a flat sandy island thirty miles north of Antigua and politically part of Antigua and Barbuda. The second is the Galapagos Islands, for which hope still remains, that Atlantia will one day sail to. The great and magnificent frigate birds are seen in the United States on both coasts, but they don’t seem to breed there. They could also be attributed the name, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, for their uncanny ability to unsettle other birds that have fish. They upset these birds so much that they drop or disgorge their prey. Before the fish hits the water, the frigate bird has swooped and swallowed the prize. Frigate birds never go into water, except by freak accident, and only seem to go to land to breed. They don’t have to land since their element is undoubtedly the air, swooping and somersaulting, with the use of their deep forked tails, in such a way that an Olympic diver could only dream of. When we have been to the breeding colony in Barbuda, we will send some more photos to you, hopefully showing the red expanded pouch, under the beak, of the breeding male .

From the largest bird in Antigua to the smallest. The Hummingbird. The ones we see around here are mostly the ‘green throated carib’. When our houses are built we will have a hummingbird feeder and hope to attract them to the deck .

The bananaquit is very like the Scottish bluetit and is of quite similar size. It appears to be an aggressive little bird, chasing other birds from the bell mouths of flowers, to have its drink of nectar. We have seen them hovering, but mostly perching on the flower stem for their drink. Something like the imbibers at the bar at Harvey Nics in Edinburgh.

We are entertained each morning at the beach café, by the Caribbean bull finches. They are similar to small robins, but don’t resemble their brightly plumaged European cousins at all. They hop about the tables of the beach café, picking up crumbs left from dinner the night before. One pretended it was lame, as it tried to beg crumbs from us, by tucking one leg under its feathery body.

The blackbirds of the Caribbean are the Grackles. They look similar to a half starved blackbird and they sometimes fly so close to us that we have started back in surprise! They are experts at weaving between posts and tables however, steered by their long black paddle tail which most of the time looks like it’s up and down rather than side to side.

The weather never seems to deter the bird, which is perhaps our favourite, the Pelican. The pelicans in Edward Lears Pelican Chorus chanted;

Plofkin Plufkin Pelican jee There are no birds so happy as we. Plumpskin, ploshkin pelican jill We think so then and we thought so still!

For the full poem go to www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/11/pelican.html. you might like it!!

Of course the birds we watch slamming into the water are the Brown Pelicans, the cousins of Edward Lears’ White Pelicans found on the Nile. Nevertheless they always look happy, especially when they are swallowing the food they have caught in their large beaks, with the pouch below. We think they must scare the fish into their beaks with the ‘plosh’ they make as they settle fiercely on the water, with their beaks under, to catch the fish. Last week one dived within feet of the boat and the splash wet us sitting in the cockpit.

W.C. Fields wrote ‘My Little Chickadee’ with Mae West and both of course star in the film, but what their antics in the wild west have to do with the Chickadee we see on the island here, is anybody’s guess. Our little bird is about the size of a starling and looks a little like a grey backed shrike but with the noticeable exception that it has a slightly forked tail, and can hover. If we saw a starling hovering we would be truly amazed. We saw a mother chickadee feeding its young, which was almost the same size as its mother. The beetle she picked up for it was fairly large, and we were surprised her youngster could swallow it.

Until recently we had a night heron perched within feet of our stern waiting for his prey. They are much smaller than our herons in Scotland, but seem, like their Scottish cousins, to stand motionless for hours, before striking. Since the hurricane season is nearly at an end, despite the somewhat rainy and blustery weather, we have adjusted our warps to take us more alongside our dock. Regrettably we have thus removed the night herons perch, but maybe he will come back to another of our mooring warps.

You will note we say our dock. This is because on Thursday we paid for the site and started work in earnest on building the water cisterns. Philson and his builders are excellent and also enthusiastic, so we hope for great things. Believe it or not, Will doesn’t interfere too much with the building work, although he always keeps a professional eye on it.

Antigua has a coast line indented with lagoons and salt ponds. The salt ponds no longer produce salt, but have an outlet to the sea which produces brackish water to feed the life which teems in the lagoons. Besides mangrove swamps with oysters and crabs, the bird life is incredibly diverse. The moorhens are just like the ones in Britain, or the United States Eastern Seaboard. They seem to be just as timid as well.

The long legged stilt is fairly numerous here, although we remember searching the ponds of Suffolk in vain, when we were young, just to catch a glimpse of a stilt. The world’s most endangered species is the black stilt but that is only found in the McKenzie River in Australia, not here, where we have the elegant but ‘common’ stilt.

Close cousins of the herons are the egrets. They look like herons but they are white. They are indeed called herons by Mr Bond. The egret seems to have found its way here from Africa, no doubt travelling in front of a hurricane!

The sandpiper is fairly common . A bird made famous by literature, it seems to have many guises in the West Indies. There is the spotted sandpiper (commonest), the solitary sandpiper, the pectoral sandpiper (presumably with a six pack), the white-rumped sandpiper, the least sandpiper, the semipalmated sandpiper, the western sandpiper, the stilt sandpiper and the buff breasted sandpiper. We think the picture is of a semipalmated sandpiper on its way to South America, but please feel free to correct us if you know better!

Well its time to get back to inspecting the water tanks. The weather is not too bad, a steady 30 degrees C. with lots of sun and plenty of showers, which is good for the palm tree which we moved.

Hope you like the pics, Love Atlantia.