Science & Nature

The Plovers Have Landed. At Least 2 of the Endangered Birds Are Confirmed at Montrose Beach

Easter may be right around the corner, but for Chicago’s piping plover lovers, Friday felt more like Christmas morning.

Two endangered Great Lakes piping plovers have been confirmed at Montrose Beach. One has been identified by his leg bands as Pippin, a bachelor male who hung out at Montrose in summer 2024. The second bird was ID'd as “Uncle Larry,” a 2023 Michigan hatchling who spent 2024 at a site in the Upper Peninsula.

A small cluster of plover watchers gathered Friday afternoon, setting up scopes to get a view of the birds, which were resting along a protected stretch of beach after their long journey north.

“It lifts my heart every year when they come back,” said Janet Pellegrini, a long-time birder and a volunteer plover monitor.

Matthew Dolkart, who’s snapped numerous iconic photos of Chicago’s piping plovers, said arrival day was always a thrill.

“Being out here with everyone, it’s meaningful to be part of a community,” Dolkart said. “Over the winter, we hope. We hope they get down (to their wintering grounds). We hope they make it back. But we never know. Now it’s another season for me to have these joyful moments.”

Chicago’s love affair with piping plovers began in 2019, when Monty and Rose became the first pair to nest in Cook County in more than 70 years.

One of their chicks, Imani (born in 2021), successfully mated with Searocket in 2024, and plover watchers are keeping an eye out for the couple’s return, as well as that of their offspring Nagamo. Plovers tend to remain faithful to the same site every year.

With an eye toward matchmaking, Pellegrini speculated that if Nagamo is a female (the sex of plover hatchlings is difficult to determine), maybe the bird could be wooed by Pippin. Wildlife experts think the protected area at Montrose Beach could support two nests.

A second Illinois plover pair, Blaze and Pepper, also successfully reared a group of chicks last summer, choosing Illinois Beach State Park as their nesting site.

Piping plovers have been on the move earlier than normal. The Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort reported the record-breaking arrival of “Obie” on April 4, one day sooner than the previous record of a spring plover sighting in the Great Lakes region.

Piping plovers have passed through Chicago in mid April before, but none of the “resident” plovers have returned this early previously, according to Tamima Itani, who coordinates the plover monitors.

“The earliest date was April 25, so this is two weeks earlier,” Itani said, but added that a “full complement of volunteers” is already in place to step in as soon as any of the nesting birds settle at Montrose.  

Itani asked that any visitors to the beach give the plovers plenty of space. It's also important, she said, to keep dogs on leash and away from the protected beach or from the plovers if they forage on the public beach. 

The Great Lakes piping plover was once down to fewer than 20 breeding pairs. Thanks to conservation efforts, that number has rebounded to roughly 70 pairs, a figure still will short of the recovery goal of 150 nesting pairs.

This article originally published on April 11 and has been updated with new information.

Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 |  [email protected]

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