Last of the Curlews

In Last of the Curlews, Canadian writer Fred Bodsworth tells of a solitary Eskimo curlew's perilous nine-thousand-mile migration from its springtime mating ground within the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America and back again. Wanton hunting and the destruction of habitat brought this graceful and once plentiful shorebird to the brink of extinction by the beginning of the twentieth century. With the skill of a trained naturalist and a direct and elegant prose style, Bodsworth conveys the mechanics of the curlew's remarkable flight and its instinctive search for others of its kind. The lone survivor comes to stand for the entirety of a lost species, and indeed for all in nature that is endangered.