Some weeks ago, a well-loved columnist wrote in these pages about the embarrassing situation of mistaking a turkey decoy for a real turkey.

We had a similar experience when we first spotted the owl decoy that sits atop the water tower in Richmond. Upon first spying the “bird,” we pulled quickly off the road and focused our spotting scope on it.

After a few minutes of observation (during which the “owl” never so much as twitched), we realized that it was made of plastic. We drove off sheepishly, hoping our embarrassing birdwatching experience didn’t somehow show up on YouTube.

Of course, humans have used decoys for a long time as a tool to try to fool birds. We haven’t researched it, but certainly decoys of one sort or another have probably been in use by human hunters in various parts of the world for thousands of years.

Stop in many an antique shop along the Maine coast and you’re sure to find bird decoys for sale that were produced in the last hundred years or so. Many of these are carved wood depictions of various waterfowl, but you may also happen upon some that were used to try to draw in shorebirds, such as curlews and plovers. Those birds were regularly hunted until the early 1900s.

Waterfowl hunters still use decoys, and though typically store-bought and often made of plastic, decoys now serve many other purposes as well.

Decoy carving has become a genuine fine art, with the masters painstakingly carving the finest details and painting them with exquisite care so that they are remarkably lifelike — and remarkably expensive! These fine art decoy carvers don’t just depict waterfowl, but everything from owls to warblers to hummingbirds.

Decoys are also a key tool in bird conservation. One of the pioneering bird conservation projects to use decoys was the work being carried out by National Audubon’s Steve Kress.

Atlantic Puffin decoys were an essential tool early in his work to restore a breeding population of the species to Eastern Egg Rock, off Bremen. He found that puffins, like many seabirds — and people! — prefer to hang out in places for which their species are showing a preference.

To entice more puffins to spend more time at Eastern Egg Rock and eventually start nesting there, he began putting puffin decoys out on the rocks. Later, he added audio sound recordings and mirrors that fooled the birds into thinking there were more there than there actually were. Steve, and many others around the world, now regularly use decoys and related techniques to lure seabirds to safe nesting areas and encourage them to nest.

Perhaps the most common decoy along all along the coast of Maine, though, remains those plastic Great Horned Owls. In addition to our water tower bird, they are a common site at docks and on boats, as a way to politely dissuade the gulls from loafing there. They may work for awhile, but like us along that road in Richmond, the gulls will eventually figure out that the owl is a fake.

As for our favorite Maine decoy, it has to be the pink flamingos. If you’ve got one on your lawn, and it ever brings in a real one, please let us know.