Here’s my favorite shorebird decoy. I have others that have finer painting and carving detail, but the whimsical rendition of the dowitcher by an unknown carver is true folk art The bird was carved in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Theodore Rogers was a wealthy Manhattan banker who was a member of a Jamaica Bay duck club on Long Island where he shot shorebirds. He had a large rig of shorebirds consisting of Dowitchers, Plovers and Curlews. His ownership was declared by branding “T. Rogers” on each bird’s bottom. Rogers died in 1903. The bird puts a smile on my face when held in my hand. It has the girth between a softball and baseball. It is an artifact of a time gone by. Jamaica Bay is now a Federal waterfowl refugee. LaGuardia Airport sits on its shoreline. We’ll be flying across it into LaGuardia in the next week or so when we fly up to meet the new grandson born last weekend.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]