Yesterday Piki and I paid a visit to a good old friend, Goldy, the Tel Aviv Pacific Golden-Plover. This individual bird has been returning to the same busy strip of coastal rocks for its eighth winter. Since 2017, when it was first found by Ilan Moriyah, it normally arrives in mid September, and stays until early March. Over the years, this bird has witnessed the adjacent landscape changing dramatically. In its early years, across the coastal promenade, an active airport was still in operation, Sde Dov. Back then, when the beach became too busy and disturbed by humans and dogs, the bird went to rest and roost in the open spaces buffering the runways, with other shorebirds. Check the blogpost from my first encounter with it, when I was attended by airport security trying to photograph it inside the airport ground. The airport stopped operating in 2019; a couple of years later development started in the abandoned land. Now it's all dug up with huge land works taking place.
Over the years, Goldy has become fully accustomed to human disturbance on one of Tel Aviv's busiest beaches. In its early years it was quite skittish. Now Goldy is a true performer, so confident and relaxed. Piki and I found it first thing, before sunrise, on the exposed vermetid reef with a few more shorebirds. We sat down quietly, no hide or camouflage needed. The bird approached us, very calm, and did its thing, which was mainly foraging for little crabs and other invertebrates living on the rocks, resting and preening, waves crashing on the rock behind it.
The sun rose behind the tall buildings of Tel Aviv, its early rays adding a beautiful golden tone to Goldys' feathers.
After a long wait for it to complete its preening and grooming session, it finally agreed to stretch its wings for us, exposing the grey-brown axillaries. What. a. bird.
Of course, with all the justified admiration to Goldy, it would be rude to ignore its neighbours.
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