WTTW News Explains: What’s the Story Behind Chicago’s Piping Plovers?

Patty Wetli | June 30, 2025, 11:03 am

Chicago’s lakefront is famously open and free.

So why is a prime section of Montrose Beach roped off every summer?

Because it’s for the birds. Literally. The piping plovers.

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Piping plovers are tiny shorebirds, about the size of a smartphone but a fraction of the weight.

There used to be a few thousand of them, spread across the entire Great Lakes, but then people took away a lot of the beaches where they lived — building houses, hotels, marinas and resorts.

By 1986, there were only about a dozen piping plover pairs left in the Great Lakes, all of them nesting in Michigan. The future looked so bleak for our feathered friends that they were officially added to the Endangered Species list.

Fast forward to 2019.

Two of these rare creatures — a male and a female — turned up on Montrose Beach.

Chicago’s birders rejoiced! There hadn’t been a nesting pair in Cook County since Harry Truman was president. But against all odds and logic, a pair of piping plovers had landed on one of the most crowded beaches in Chicago and decided to start a family.

Amazing!

Maybe a slightly unwise choice on the plovers’ part …

But amazing!

An army of volunteers quickly formed to protect the plovers, who they named Monty and Rose, from beachgoers and other threats.

Long story short, the couple and eventually their chicks spent the summer charming the pants off Chicagoans before flying south for the winter.

And whaddya know, like all summer blockbusters, this tale has a sequel. Monty and Rose returned to Montrose to nest again in 2020.

Incredibly, they landed in Chicago within hours of each other, despite spending the winter on opposite sides of the Gulf of … Whatever.

The dynamic duo completed the trilogy in 2021, raising a third group of chicks at Montrose.

Alas, in 2022 the saga took a tragic turn. Rose never made it back to Chicago, and Monty died of an infection, though some would say it was really of a broken heart.

Still the legacy of these lovebirds lives on, not just in their son, Imani, who has also found a mate at Montrose, but in the goodwill these two crazy kids created for their species.