Digital depiction of an Eskimo curlew by USFWS/Christina Nelson
(https://medium.com/)
On Friday, September 4, 2026, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s documentary The Last Curlew will premiere at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.
This date carries a heavy resonance. It was on September 4th, 1963, that the last known Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis) was shot in a shooting swamp here in Barbados—a tragic end to a species once celebrated for its epic migrations across the Americas. Now, on that very anniversary, this film returns to the island to honor the bird’s memory and remind us of the fragility of migratory life.
In a nation still hunts shorebirds, The Last Curlew seeks transforms loss into reflection, urging us to protect the species that still depend on these same flyways.