According to the Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort, 2025 has been a year for the record books, with 82 breeding pairs counted.

Blaze and Pepper — the piping plover momma and papa who raised three chicks on a Waukegan beach in 2024 — are back on the nest with a full clutch of four eggs.

Chicago's piping plover pair, Imani and Sea Rocket, are officially expecting.

Sea Rocket, who mated with Imani in 2024, has landed at Montrose Beach. Blaze and Pepper, who raised three chicks last summer, are also back on a Waukegan beach.

The latest tactic in Chicago's ongoing war against rats is to attack the problem at the source — with birth control instead of poison.

Double-crested cormorants have been thrilling Chicagoans lucky enough to witness thousands of the birds streaming along the Lake Michigan shoreline — wave after wave, lasting for several minutes — as they migrate further north.

Imani hatched at Montrose Beach in 2021. He has faithfully returned every year since, and last year he finally made a love connection.

The wait is on to see whether at least one, or possibly two, pairs of plovers will nest at Montrose Beach this year.

Reports of wild bird deaths continue to mount, and not just in Illinois. Meanwhile, a vaccine for chickens could be on the horizon.

Wildlife professionals and advocates are grappling with an avian influenza outbreak that seems to be growing more virulent among Chicago's wild birds.

Snowy owl sightings have been thrilling people across northern Illinois this winter, but these occasional visitors from the Arctic face a lot of hazards — including humans and cars — when they venture outside their normal isolated tundra environment.

A Chilean flamingo died Jan. 8 and a harbor seal died Jan. 9, with testing confirming highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) as the cause, Lincoln Park Zoo officials said.

Chicago Bird Collision Monitors has been responding to an increase in calls for help in rescuing wild birds suffering from avian influenza.

According to recently released information, bird collision deaths have dropped by as much as 95% at McCormick Place Lakeside Center after bird-friendly window film was installed on the convention center’s glass.

More than 3,000 bald eagles make their home in Illinois during the coldest months of the year, the largest population of wintering bald eagles in the continental U.S., according to state wildlife officials.

Health officials have said the person was older than 65, had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock.