What does a New Yorker do on Thanksgiving Day when his wife is working in the morning and the big event isn’t scheduled until the next day? Easy: birds. Birds in the hundreds, birds in flocks and pairs and flights, birds everywhere but on one’s plate. Birds at Jamaica Bay, and most of all gulls. On a windy cold morning, there were some Canada geese and swans, a few cormorants, and even a raven - but the stars were the gulls. Herring gulls by the look of it (but I’m far from sure), and mostly not doing much except sitting on the beach and bobbing in a foot of water, waiting for the tide to ebb and leave something juicy to pick. But then, after a couple of hours of sitting among them dressed all in dark green to avoid looking too much like a big annoying human, I saw two gulls do something interesting. I have no idea what their problem was, but these two fought to the point of drawing blood. Mating ritual? Someone got too close? I didn’t see any food involved. So, no idea, but it was fun to shoot.

They went at it for a couple of minutes, then one of the two, after being held by the beak in what seemed to be a victory gesture by the other gull, decided it was enough. He tried to save face by looking menacing while flying off: but fly off he did, with a spectacular vertical takeoff that made him look like a griffon from some haughty duke’s crest. Who says gulls are ugly?

Oh, and the other Thanksgiving bird? The one you have to have when you’re in America? That one’s for tomorrow. For today, precisely because we are in America and you can have anything anytime from anywhere, the menu features lobster yi mein, on Mott Street in Chinatown - where today felt like any other day, smelling of fish and weird sauces, and nearly as crowded as an ordinary Thursday.