RIG OF TEN SHORE BIRDS (YELLOWLEGS), RHODE ISLAND, CIRCA 1890

Estate in North Kingston, Rhode Island;

Walters-Benisek Art and Antiques, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Tom Geismar and Harvey Kahn, Spiritually Moving: A Collection of American Folk Art Sculpture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998) cat. no. 42, illus. in color.

Like many types of wildfowl, yellowlegs and other shorebirds are gregarious creatures that travel in sizeable groups. Hunters lured these seaside birds with groups of decoys on sticks that were set into the sand, but very few complete gunning rigs like this one are still together today. While concerns about rapidly diminishing shorebird populations began to be voiced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, shorebird hunting remained legal until 1928.