Hunched over a piece of wood, Hank Sprouse whittles away in his basement workshop in Stratford, 黑料新闻. What looks like a simple carving now, will eventually become a realistic-looking cedar waxwing bird.
鈥淭he eye is going to be somewhere in here,鈥� he says.
Sprouse is part of a dwindling community of bird carvers, a group of artists who make lifelike birds out of blocks of wood. It鈥檚 a meticulous process that includes photo research and reference materials, making sure all the features are anatomically correct, from the size of the bill to the design and color of each etched-in feather.
A former dentist, Sprouse jokes that the drilling comes easy to him. The hard part is making sure the glass eyes point in the same direction.
鈥淚 think my wife has corrected me on all but maybe four or five on the eyes,鈥� Sprouse says. 鈥淪he says, 鈥楴o, up, down, in or out.鈥� She's got a hand in every carving I've ever done, I think. So that's fun for her and it's fun for us.鈥�
Bird carvings, especially of waterfowl birds like ducks, were initially used by hunters to attract and capture real birds. A duck decoy, for instance, might have lured a real duck, thinking there was food nearby or that the area was safe to rest in. The earliest decoys were made from reeds by Native Americans, with colonial settlers turning to wood carvings in the 1700s.
But as the number of bird hunters has declined, so too has the need for decoys, freeing the carvings to be more elaborate and artistic than purely functional. Over time, bird decoys have come to be considered a form of American folk art 鈥� with decoys housed in art museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
鈥淚t's gotten so sophisticated and breathtaking,鈥� says Sprouse, who鈥檚 been making decoys since the 1980s. He remembers when the , an annual competition held in Ocean City, Maryland, was filled with carvers and spectators.
鈥淓lbow to elbow, room to room. There was no extra space anywhere. And that's just kind of slowly declined,鈥� he says.
That decline is due, in part, to a lack of new, younger people taking up the craft, he says. Many of today鈥檚 bird carvers are on the older side. Sprouse is 84 years old and says the majority of carvers he knows are over 60.
鈥淚鈥檓 really sad to see it go in the direction it's going and I don't know what, if anything, will turn it around,鈥� Sprouse says. 鈥淚t is a true American craft and it's going to be a shame if that dies.鈥�
This year, Sprouse used his decoy-making skills for a new purpose: to raise awareness of birds facing habitat loss. According to a , two-thirds of North American bird species are at risk of extinction due to climate change, including extreme heat in the spring and rising sea levels.
Sprouse and another bird carver, Alan Gabris of New Hampshire, created an art installation of more than a dozen decoys, representing birds from the endangered spoon-billed sandpiper to the extinct Bachman鈥檚 warbler.
鈥淲e鈥檝e got to make more people aware of what's going on,鈥� Sprouse says. 鈥淎nd that's what we tried to do.鈥�
For Hank, the attention to detail is a meditative process. A sign in his workshop reads 鈥榖ird carving is good therapy.鈥�
鈥淲e've all got a talent that's in us and a lot of people never find it,鈥� Sprouse says. 鈥淚 just was lucky. I saw it and I found it and I love doing it. I love what my gift is. So I continue to do it.鈥�
脕ine Pennello is a corps member who covers the environment and climate change for 黑料新闻.
