(4) Hand Carved Wooden Bufflehead Decoy Ducks. The bufflehead is a small sea duck of the genus Bucephala, the goldeneyes. It breeds in Alaska and Canada and migrates in winter to southern North America. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as Anas albeola. One initialed N.S., another W.M. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: (largest) 9 x 5 x 6 in. 

#7555 . 

A duck decoy (or decoy duck) is a man-made object resembling a duck. The earliest known use of duck decoys was by ancient Egyptians, who used decoys made of clay on the Nile to hunt ducks and geese around 2500 BC. Decoy ducks have been used in traditional hunting by Indigenous Australian peoples of the Murray River in South Australia for many centuries, and Native American people have been crafting and using duck decoys for thousands of years. More realistic, highly-detailed wooden carved decoys arose in North America in the 19th and 20th centuries. After World War II manufacturers began to make decoys out of papier-mâché and eventually plastic, and battery-powered moving decoys gained popularity in the 1990s. Duck decoys are primarily used in hunting to attract ducks (or other water fowl) to an area of water by giving the impression that other ducks are in the area, creating a false sense of security. Decoys are made in different forms designed to mimic different activities of ducks, including “feeders” and “sleepers.” Decoys are weighted to keep them anchored in place when floating. Duck decoys may be colored to have a natural appearance, or they may be entirely black, as black decoys are more easily visible to passing ducks on overcast days. Some modern decoys use batteries to move, which creates waves in the water, adding a sense of realism that may fool ducks more. One of the most popular forms of motion decoys is one that has spinning wings, creating the illusion of a duck in flight. Ever since Joel Barber, the first known decoy collector, started in 1918, decoys have become increasingly viewed as an important form of North American folk art. Barber’s book Wild Fowl Decoys was the first book on decoys as collectible objects. It was followed in 1965 by folk art dealer Adele Earnest’s The Art of the Decoy and American Bird Decoys by collector William F. Mackey. Collectors typically focus on particular categories of decoys, such as working, decorative, antique, or contemporary. In addition, collectors may focus on decoys from particular regions such as eastern North America, Louisiana, California, or the Upper Mississippi Flyway, which all have unique decoy-carving traditions. In early 2007 a red-breasted merganser hen decoy created by Lothrop Holmes sold at auction for $856,000. At the time, it was one of the highest prices ever paid for a duck decoy. The first million-dollar price was achieved when two decoys created by the 19th Century Massachusetts master carver A. Elmer Crowell, a Canada goose decoy and a preening Northern pintail drake decoy, were sold for $1.13 million each in a private sale in September of 2007.

Commensurate with age.