The last two years I have spent weekends in Montauk working at Winick Fine Jewelry living in a large tent mounted on a platform. A small bed, an electrical light, the internet, and a fan cover the simplest of my creature comforts. I fall asleep to the sound of waves and wake with the birdsong preceding the dawn. In the morning I wander down to Ditch Plains and swim in the ocean, The sand is trampled by the beachgoers, but Montauk is approaching Labor Day after which gll prints will cover the shore break. I admire their freedom and last weekend I spotted one perched on an electrical pole. facing the wind.
Seagulls have been a part of my life on the East Coast, floating behind the Staten Island ferry, huddling against the winter wind on Riis Park Beach, feasting on scraps a the Falmouth Foresides dump, following the Dover ferry en route to Calais, and gliding over Montauk bluffs. They seemed to be everywhere, until I traveled through the Orient thirty years ago. None in Thailand where I once lived. None. I wondered why. I thought that the shrimp farmers had killed them to protect their harvest. I asked Thais about the gulls and some fishermen said that the foreigners on the fishing boats dine on them, since they are starved by the sea captains.
Seagulls are not featured on any menus from Block Island to Castine, butu I found a recipe for cooking them; Take a sharp knife and put in under the skin at the back part of the neck, and carry down to the tail feathers; after which pull off the skin down to the middle of the legs, and next take out the intestines. Leave the birds in salt and water for eight hours, when their fishy taste will be found to be quite gone, and you can either cook them as you would pigeon pie or in any other way. The country house, a collection of useful information and recipes, ed. by I.E.B.C. (1866)
Not for me, but further research explained their rarity in Thailand, The sea is too warm for them, which is good, because the Thais will east most everything. Everything, but sea gulls__
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Much more to come.
