The Hidden World of the American Oystercatcher

Sculptors often spend a lot of time with their subjects, but Rachel Frank takes that connection to another level. As a rehabilitator at the Wild Bird Fund in Manhattan, she’s cared for an array of creatures that live in or pass through the city, including rodenticide-poisoned owls, kestrels injured by cats, and diseased hawks. Her intimate knowledge of wildlife infuses the ceramic sculptures she creates in her Brooklyn studio.

Originally from a small town in northern Kentucky, Frank grew up working with horses and helping out on family farms. When she moved to New York City in 2005, she missed those regular encounters with animals and nature. So while working as a sculptor and art instructor, she began volunteering for the Wild Bird Fund and then signed on full time after she lost her teaching job during the pandemic. Now she is in charge of one of the most diverse departments: waterfowl, raptors, and—surprisingly, given the facility’s name—turtles. “There’s very different treatments between a lot of these different species,” Frank says, “but I really like the challenge.”

Some of the standouts on Frank’s long list of patients are the American Oystercatchers that have come into her care with wing injuries and swallowed fish hooks. The large black and white shorebird, which inhabits quieter patches of New York City beaches like the Rockaways and Jamaica Bay, is instantly recognizable: “It has such a bright, orangish-red beak, and a haunting, whistling, kind of laughing call,” Frank says.

The artist features this distinctive species in her piece for The Aviary, titled “Liminal Offering Vessel: American Oystercatcher and Tide Pools.” The statue’s shape was inspired by ancient Mediterranean vessels called ring-kernos, circular pieces with bowls attached to hold offerings of honey, oil, wine, or grains. Frank likes working in this form because of its long history and rich symbolism; many of the earliest ceramics were vessels. “I’m interested in sculptural objects that are tied to ideas of exchange, connection, movement, and ritual,” she says.

Frank’s oystercatcher itself serves as the offering bowl, sculpted with its head down and beak scrabbling for shellfish. The ring of clay that forms the bird’s perch encircles empty space meant to suggest its tide-pool habitat—“this hidden world that we don’t really get to see too often.” Frank molded the hollow vessel out of one large piece of clay before adding details like mussels, sea anemones, wrack, and other seaweeds, and carving in scratches and little holes to hint at unseen creatures that have burrowed into the rock or sand. Frank, who mixes many of her own glazes, made a lot of test tiles to get the colors right, ultimately firing the sculpture several times at higher and lower temperatures to achieve the mostly matte finish. The resulting piece has a soft, delicate, almost watercolor-like palette, with a few shiny elements suggesting plants gleaming with sea water after the tide just went out.

The circular sculpture perfectly captures the cyclical nature of the shorebird’s existence and its role in the ecosystem: eating at low tide, retreating to the upper beaches at high tide, and releasing those nutrients back out to sea through their guano—boosting coral reef health in the process. The American Oystercatcher has seen its own cycles of boom and bust. Populations had plummeted by the early 20th century because the birds were hunted for food and feathers, but the species rebounded after the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act made it illegal to harm them. In recent years, oystercatchers, like other shorebirds, have seen further threats from sea-level rise and human development, though wide-reaching conservation efforts have helped fend off their decline.

Those looming threats are challenging to show in clay, but Frank’s piece captures the delicate balance for the birds. “I wanted that sort of tenuousness,” Frank says. “The movements of the tides, and also the idea of the shoreline being a vulnerable space.” Meanwhile, the artist has her hands full with doing her own part to help New York’s wild residents. After Audubon spoke with her in July, she planned to spend the upcoming weekend at the rehabilitation center, taking care of her latest patients: a family of orphan Mallard ducklings.

This piece originally ran in the Fall 2025 issue. To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.