"The Last of the Curlews is a wonderful book about birds. It's a fictionalized account of the lives of the last pair of Eskimo Curlews, last as in a species about to be gone forever. It was published in 1955, selling over three million copies. Its author, Canadian Fred Bodsworth, died Sept. 15. His book remains in print (Amazon, $10.17 Thursday morning). It's a classic in birding literature, one of the finest fiction accounts of natural history. What we lose when a species goes extinct is made clear.
