Birding Bond

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• Thunderfinger Das Boot Hill

  March 2018 Posts: 45,489

  You could say that Bond snipes Naomi in TSWLM. And there is a failed attempt in AVTAK, from a tree. Perhaps Bond shooting Mr White counts as well.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 edited March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Trademarked, huh, @Agent_99.
  
  I like those, @Thunderfinger, will add them to the list. Think you mean Moonraker for the tree sniper.
  
  And I'm recalling Bert Saxby's clumsy effort in Diamonds Are Forever.
• Thunderfinger Das Boot Hill

  March 2018 Posts: 45,489

  RichardTheBruce wrote: »

  Trademarked, huh, @Agent_99.
  
  I like those, @Thunderfinger, will add them to the list. Think you mean Moonraker for the tree sniper.
  
  And I'm recalling Bert Saxby's clumsy effort in Diamonds Are Forever.

  
  Yes, of course MR.
• Agent_99 enjoys a spirited ride as much as the next girl

  March 2018 Posts: 3,176

  RichardTheBruce wrote: »

  Trademarked, huh, @Agent_99.

  
  I've decided it's my Thing.
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  March 2018 Posts: 8,266

  Fokker F-XVIII named 'snip' fliesto the Dutch West Indies (Surinam and Curacao) from Amsterdam in 1934.
  
  
  
  
  and as an honarable mention the BOAC Monarch flight, as it was in the first citation @RichardTheBruce used from Goldfinger:
  
  
  
  The stratocruiser as it was used for the Monarch service.
• Agent_99 enjoys a spirited ride as much as the next girl

  March 2018 Posts: 3,176

  Great video, @CommanderRoss! Such a sense of excitement.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Agent_99 wrote: »

  RichardTheBruce wrote: »

  Trademarked, huh, @Agent_99.

  I've decided it's my Thing.

  Supported!
  
  I updated the snipe list. Still open for suggestions, then I'll move it to Statistics.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 edited March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Magpie / ˈmaɡ·pī / noun
  1. a black and white or colored crow, noisy
  2. a collector of trivial items
  3. a perpetrator of useless conversation
  
  Formerly Maggoty-pie, Maggot-the-pie, or simply... Pie. Mag in use as a nickname for Margaret or women in general. Magge tales, tall tales or worse. Old French (Pie). French (Margot, magpie; relates to nickname Margot for Margeurite). Latin (Pica). Sanskrit (Pikah, Indian cuckoo). Old Norse (Spætr). German (Elster, for magpie, compare to Specht for woodpecker, Raben for Raven and Rabenvogel for literally Raven bird). Dutch (Ekster).
  
  Magpie (Corvidae): colorful crows, black and white and usually variations of blue, green. Very intelligent, can learn to speak some words. Absconders (and hoarders) of shiny and useless items. Range through Europe, Asia, the North American West, also Tibet, India, Pakistan. Magpies so named in Australia are a different family altogether.
  
  Holarctic magpies (Pica), black-and-white.
  Eurasian magpie (Pica pica), Black-billed magpie (Pica hudsonia), Yellow-billed magpie (Pica nuttalli), Asir magpi ( Pica asirensis ), Maghreb magpie (Pica mauritanica), Korean magpie (Pica sericea).
  Oriental magpies (Urocissa), blue/green.
  Taiwan blue magpie (Urocissa caerulea), Red-billed blue magpie(Urocissa erythrorhyncha), Yellow-billed blue magpie (Urocissa flavirostris), White-winged magpie (Urocissa whiteheadi), Sri Lanka blue magpie (Urocissa ornata).
  Oriental magpies (Cissa), blue/green).
  Common green magpie[/b], (Cissa chinensis), Indochinese green magpie, (Cissa hypoleuca), Javan green magpie, (Cissa thalassina), Bornean green magpie, (Cissa jefferyi).
  Azure-winged magpies (Cyanopica).
  Azure-winged magpie (Cyanopica cyanus), Iberian magpie, (Cyanopica cooki).
  Less than true magpies: Black magpie, Australian magpie.
  
  Eurasian magpie
  
  Black-billed magpie
  
  Taiwan blue magpie
  
  Yellow-billed magpie
  
  Oriental magpies
  
  Azure-winged magpie
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming, 1960.
  “From a View to a Kill”
  
  ...
  The man with the gun had slowed. Now he was fifty yards away. His face, undistorted by the wind, had set into blunt, hard, perhaps Slav lines. A red spark burned behind the black, aimed muzzles of the eyes. Forty yards, thirty. A single magpie flew out of the forest ahead of the young dispatch-rider. It fled clumsily across the road into the bushes behind a Michelin sign that said that St Germain was one kilometre to go. The young man grinned and raised an ironical finger in salute and self-protection — 'One magpie is sorrow'.
  
  Twenty yards behind him the man with the gun took both hands off the handlebars, lifted the Luger, rested it carefully on his left forearm and fired one shot.
  
  The young man's hands whipped off his controls and met across the centre of his backward-arching spine. His machine veered across the road, jumped a narrow ditch and ploughed into a patch of grass and lilies of the valley. There it rose up on its screaming back wheel and slowly crashed backwards on top of its dead rider. The BSA coughed and kicked and tore at the young man's clothes and at the flowers, and then lay quiet.
  ...

  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Ian Fleming’s James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming’s James Bond Stories,
  John Griswold, 2006.
  
  'One magpie is sorrow": This is a reference to a famous Scottish counting rhyme that uses magpies folklore. The rhyme tells of events that will happen based on the number of these birds seen. There are many variations on the rhyme, for example:
  
  One’s sorrow, two’s mirth
  Three’s a wedding, four’s a birth
  Five’s a christening, six a death
  Seven’s heaven, eight is hell.
  And nine’s the Devil his ane sel’.
  
  [Michael Aislabie Denham's Proverbs and Popular Saying of the Seasons (London, 1846).]

  
  
  Later used with crows.
  
  
  Still another version:
  
  

  One for sorrow,
  Two for joy,
  Three for a girl,
  Four for a boy,
  Five for silver,
  Six for gold,
  Seven for a secret,
  Never to be told.
  Eight for a wish,
  Nine for a kiss,
  Ten for a bird,
  You must not miss.

  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 edited March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  A pop culture example, Adam Duritz's rock band Counting Crows.

  August and Everything After, Counting Crows, 1993.
  "A Murder of One"
  
  The rhyme figures into the group’s name. Also remember “a murder” is a group of crows.
  Quoted lyrics start about 2:07.

  …
  Well I dreamt I saw you walking,
  Up a hillside in the snow
  Casting shadows on the winter sky,
  As you stood there, counting crows
  One for sorrow, two for joy,
  Three for girls, and four for boys,
  Five for silver, six for gold,
  Seven for a secret, never to be told
  There's a bird that nests inside you,
  Sleeping underneath your skin
  Yeah, when you open up your wings to speak,
  I wish you'd let me in
  …

  

  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 edited March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  

  Thrilling Cities, Ian Fleming, 1963
  Chapter I – Hong Kong
  
  …
  "Is more better now, Master?"
  
  I grunted luxuriously and the velvet hands withdrew from my shoulders. More Tiger Balm was applied to the finger tips and then the hands were back, now to massage the base of my neck with soft authority. Through the open french windows the song of bulbuls came from the big orchid tree covered with deep pink blossom and two Chinese magpies chattered in the grove of casuarina. Somewhere far away turtle doves were saying 'coocoroo'. Number One Boy (Number One from among seven in the house) came in to say that breakfast was ready on the veranda. I exchanged compliments with the dimpling masseuse, put on a shirt and trousers and sandals and walked out into the spectacular, sun-drenched view.
  
  As, half-way through the delicious scrambled eggs and bacon, a confiding butterfly, black and cream and dark blue, settled on my wrist, I reflected that heaven could wait. Here, on the green and scarcely inhabited slopes of Shek-O, above Big Wave Bay on the south-east corner of Hong Kong island, was good enough.

  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 edited March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Birds of the West Indies, James Bond, 1961.
  
  CROWS, MAGPIES & JAYS: Cordiivae
  
  Crows are a cosmopolitan group of birds, apparently of Old World origin. They do not occur in Central or South America, but are represented in the West Indies by as many as four species. On the other hand, it is remarkable that jays are absent from this region, for they abound in North and Central America.

  
• Agent_99 enjoys a spirited ride as much as the next girl

  March 2018 Posts: 3,176

  I grew up in the knowledge that you can avert the bad luck caused by seeing a single magpie by spitting - or, as a schoolfriend of mine insisted, by saying "Hello Mr Magpie, how's Mrs Magpie and all the little magpies?"
• Thunderfinger Das Boot Hill

  March 2018 Posts: 45,489

  Agent_99 wrote: »

  I grew up in the knowledge that you can avert the bad luck caused by seeing a single magpie by spitting - or, as a schoolfriend of mine insisted, by saying "Hello Mr Magpie, how's Mrs Magpie and all the little magpies?"

  
  And it has always worked?
• Agent_99 enjoys a spirited ride as much as the next girl

  March 2018 Posts: 3,176

  I've seen plenty of lone magpies and nothing catastrophic has befallen me so far...touch wood.
• Thunderfinger Das Boot Hill

  March 2018 Posts: 45,489

  Wow, imagine how much trial and error lies behind these wisdom words of old.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  So, @Thunderfinger, I thought you'd have a contribution on this one. Magpies, I mean.
• Thunderfinger Das Boot Hill

  March 2018 Posts: 45,489

  
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  March 2018 Posts: 8,266

  @Richardthebruce I'm afraid you've got the German translation wrong. It is not the specht which you rightfully translated to woodpecker (Picidae), but th Elster ( Dutch: Ekster) Latin: Pica pica. Indeed from the Corvidae family., in German Rabenvogel (Raben=Raven, vogel=bird). The misunderstanding, however, is understandable.
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  March 2018 Posts: 8,266

  The Royal Navy had has had 9 vessels called HMS Magpie, from an 4 gun schooner from 1806 to an inshore survay vessel to be launched this may.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Magpie
  
  KLM had the lovely habit of giving bird names to it's aircraft, as you've noticed, so here are the Fokker FXII, nad the Lockheed 14 'Ekster':
  
  
  
  
  
  The last one crashed in 1938 shortly after take-off, killing all aboard.
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  March 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Corrections welcome, @CommanderRoss, I updated to include all the possibilities.
  
  Right on, @Thunderfinger. One of my favorite trivia questions, it usually stumps birdwatchers.
  
  Q: What kind of birds are Heckle and Jeckle?

  A: Magpies. Or specifically, Yellow-billed magpies.

  
  You posted the first, Heckle and Jeckle really come into their own in the second as two male troublemakers.
  

  "The Uninvited Pests", Terrytoon, 1946.
  
  

  
  
  
  And not to be confused with Prohías' Spy vs. Spy characters in Mad Magazine. Who are not birds (!).
  
  
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  April 2018 edited April 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Ostrich / ˈäs·trich / noun
  1. the largest current day bird, strong runner, incapable of flight
  2. one who avoids reality
  
  Old French (ostruce and ostriche, "ostrich"). Modern French (autruche). Medieval Latin (ostrica, ostrigius). Latin (avis struthio; from Latin avis, bird, from awi, bird). Late Latin (struthio, from Greek strouthiōn, from strouthos megale or big sparrow). Greek (strouthokamelos, camel-sparrow).
  
  Ostrich (S. camelus): the largest existing bird, a powerful runner but not able to fly. Eats plants, some insects. Gathers in herd of up to 50. Will avoid (run away!) and hide from danger, lying flat to ground. When cornered, fights with its legs. A male may maintain a harem. Farmed for its lean meat, leather, and feathers.
  
  Common ostrich (S. camelus).
  North African ostrich or Red-necked ostrich or Barbary ostrich (S. c. camelus).
  South African ostrich or Black-necked ostrich or Southern ostrich (S. c. australis).
  Masai ostrich or Pink-necked ostrich or East African ostrich (S. c. massaicus).
  Arabian ostrich or Syrian ostrich or Middle Eastern ostrich (S. c. syriacus). Extinct 1966.
  Somali ostrich or Blue-necked ostrich (S. molybdophanes).
  
  Common ostrich .
  
  North African ostrich or Red-necked ostrich or Barbary ostrich.
  
  South African ostrich or Black-necked ostrich or Southern ostrich.
  
  
  Masai ostrich or Pink-necked ostrich or East African ostrich.
  
  Arabian ostrich or Syrian ostrich or Middle Eastern ostrich.
  
  
  Somali ostrich or Blue-necked ostrich.
  
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  April 2018 Posts: 13,820

  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  April 2018 Posts: 13,820

  Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming, 1954.
  Chapter VI – Table Z
  ...
  'Voodoo drummers from Haiti,' whispered Leiter.
  
  There was silence. With the tips of their fingers the drummers began a slow, broken beat, a soft rumba shuffle.
  
  'And now, friends,' announced the MC, still turned towards the drums, 'G-G…' he paused, 'SUMATRA.'
  
  The last word was a yell. He began to clap. There was pandemonium in the room, a frenzy of applause. The door behind the drums burst open and two huge negroes, naked except for gold loincloths, ran out on to the floor carrying between them, her arms round their necks, a tiny figure, swathed completely in black ostrich feathers, a black domino across her eyes.
  
  They put her down in the middle of the floor. They bowed down on either side of her until their foreheads met the ground. She took two paces forward. With the spotlight off them, the two negroes melted away into the shadows and through the door.
  
  The MC had disappeared. There was absolute silence save for the soft thud of the drums.

  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  April 2018 Posts: 13,820

  From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming, 1957.
  Chapter Nine – A Labour of Love
  
  …
  Tatiana's mouth had fallen open. She shut it quickly. She searched for something to say.
  
  Colonel Klebb of SMERSH was wearing a semi-transparent nightgown in orange crêpe de chine. It had scallops of the same material round the low square neckline and scallops at the wrists of the broadly flounced sleeves. Underneath could be seen a brassière consisting of two large pink satin roses. Below, she wore old-fashioned knickers of pink satin with elastic above the knees. One dimpled knee, like a yellowish coconut, appeared thrust forward between the half open folds of the nightgown in the classic stance of the modeller. The feet were enclosed in pink satin slippers with pompoms of ostrich feathers. Rosa Klebb had taken off her spectacles and her naked face was now thick with mascara and rouge and lipstick.
  
  She looked like the oldest and ugliest whore in the world.

  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  April 2018 edited April 2018 Posts: 13,820

  

  The Diamond Smugglers, Ian Fleming, 1957.
  Chapter Two – The Gem Beach
  
  ...
  ‘Once Patterson’s mind was made up he started building up his secret stock of diamonds in a canister which he kept buried in the sand under his tent, and in due course, on August 8th, 1952, he went down to Oranjemund and was given a series of farewell parties before he went through his security checks and took the plane off to Johannesburg for the annual leave from which he had no intention of returning. There would be no more hard lying in a tent for Tim Patterson. He would be rich!
  
  ‘On November 25th Patterson resigned, and he courteously wrote to his friend Hallam to say that he would not be coming back to C.D.M. Hallam and his friends at Oranjemund were sorry. They had all taken to Patterson.’
  
  Blaize paused. He shuffled through his papers and extracted a typewritten sheet. He said, ‘For this part of the story I can’t do better than read from my notes of the case. I took these down from Piet Willers, who was C.D.M.’s Chief Security Officer. He was an efficient and most likeable chap. Although it’s nothing to do with the story, he got the job by an extraordinary fluke. The previous Security Chief had been killed by an ostrich. He’d been driving through the desert when one of a flock of ostriches panicked and rushed blindly at his Land-Rover.
  
  One of the bird’s feet went through the open window, and the central claw stabbed the man through the heart.’ Blaize shrugged his shoulders.

  
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  April 2018 Posts: 13,820

  For the films, there’s a good start with @Birdleson’s IDs.
  

  Bond Film Statistics (Page 6, THE ANIMALS OF BOND).
  https://mi6community.com/discussion/15814/bond-film-statistics-09-forklift-ground-conveyor-appearances/p6
  
  LIVE AND LET DIE (1973)
  -PTS: Parasols and fans made from colorfully dyed Ostrich Feathers are brandished by the New Orleans funeral procession participants.
  MOONRAKER (1979)
  -Many dyed Ostrich Feathers adorning celebrants in the Carnivale Parade.
  OCTOPUSSY (1983)
  -Many Ostrich Feathers adorn the heads of the circus performers.
  CASINO ROYALE (1967)
  -Mata's servant Charlie fans her with a fan made of large Ostrich or Peacock Feathers.

  
  
  Before I roll everything up, I want to suggest these.
  

  THUNDERBALL (1965)
  - Fiona in blue, plus the Junkanoo.
  DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971)
  - Those Acorns and the other showgirls.

  
  
  Any more?
  
  
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  April 2018 Posts: 8,266

  I'm quite impressed, I wasn't aware ostrich's played such an important role in the Bond universe. I also wasn't expecting to find anything flyeable with such a name, at least I wasn't aware of anything in existence. But apparently there's an 'Ostrich Fighter' in some other fantasy universe:
  
  
  I just don't know which unverse it is.
  
  I do know however that an ostrich was involved in WW!:
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  April 2018 Posts: 13,820

  
  Enjoyed Blackadder, @CommanderRoss.
  
  Yeah, "ostrich" doesn't really work with real aircraft. Though some may try.