Roothead Shorebirds

Childhood whittling grows into a lifelong career

Ernie Mills learned to whittle from his grandfather at the age of seven. He went on to help his father rough out silhouette decoys to attract ducks and geese flying over the fields outside Bombay Hook Refuge, Delaware. Folklorist and longtime friend John Burrison describes the varied types of carvings Mills has mastered as ranging from “working decoys” for hunting to decorative “mantel carvings” for display and miscellaneous forms such as the “roothead shorebirds” shown here.

In our phone conversation, I asked Mills what the “roothead” referred to. It’s neither a type of bird nor the source of wood (e.g., not a root). Rather, it’s the shape of wood that might make a good head and neck—as found on a tree limb.

“Basically, you walk around and look for different shapes of tree branches—forks and limbs,” he explained. “You can kind of see head and neck shapes and say to yourself, ‘That would make a nice one.’ So you cut it off and trim it town. They’re simple to make. And then you make a body you like.”

Back in the heyday of bird hunting along the Atlantic seaboard, as Mills described, hunters would “carry hundreds of bodies and heads in old burlap bags down to the shore … and just reach in and get out a head and get out a body and stick them together.” Planted in the sand, the wooden figures looked like a flock of birds from above.

At the Olympic Arts Festival, Mills was paired with Georgia potter CJ Meaders during the opening week, working in adjacent booths flanking the marketplace entrance. In preparation, Mills brought seven blocks of wood to chop into bird form, using a small axe to rough out the body shape. He then carved and attached a head and invited children to take turns with the sanding bow. On some days, as many as 200 lined up to help. When finished, the young sanders signed their names, and by the end of the week, Milles and his visitors had carved seven new canvasback duck decoys.