An adorable pair of the migratory birds known as piping plovers captured Chicago’s collective heart during the summer of 2019. Named Monty and Rose in honor of their nesting location — Montrose Beach — the couple’s presence forced the cancellation of a music festival, inspired T-shirts and brews of beer and united volunteers and curious onlookers in protecting the delicate creatures, whose sandy-colored plumage and eggs help camouflage them from predators.
Now limited in numbers, the birds were once plentiful along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Their small stature even inspired one outdoor sportsman to lower his rifle.
In a column by Grover Cleveland titled “Joy of summer shooting” that was published in the Tribune on June 1, 1904, the former U.S. president said this about piping plovers: “I would not advise the summer vacationist who lacks the genuine sporting spirit to pursue the shore bird. Those who do so should not disgrace themselves by killing the handsome little sandpipers, or peeps, too small to eat. It is better to go home with nothing killed than to feel the weight of a mean, unsportsmanlike act.”
Habitat decline due to human encroachment and disturbances by wild animals caused the number of piping plovers to dwindle.
By 1981, only 17 pairs of piping plovers existed in the region. The bird was listed on the state’s first-ever endangered species list, which was released in February 1978. The Great Lakes population was listed as endangered on Dec. 11, 1985, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A recovery program for the species began in 1986.
Efforts over the past 30 years have brought the piping plover numbers back from near extinction in Illinois, but conservation work continues. Here’s a look back at some piping plover milestones in the Chicago area.
June-July 1995
When the Missouri River began to rise, a team from Lincoln Park Zoo and Milwaukee County Zoo headed to North and South Dakota with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rescue clutches of piping plover eggs before they were claimed by the flood. Each zoo returned home from the one-day mission with 15 eggs. Lincoln Park used incubators to successfully hatch 13. Milwaukee hatched 11. To their knowledge, it was the first time that had ever happened for the species in captivity. Each bird was reared by hand — or, more accurately, a sand-filled sock designed to look like an adult plover because chicks “imprint” on the first object they see when emerging from their shells.
Seven of the birds at Lincoln Park Zoo reached maturity while living inside McCormick Bird House. Two of them were photographed and featured on U.S. Postal Service stamps for a series on endangered species.
June 13, 1998
Weighing less than an ounce, a fuzzy piping plover chick became the world’s first captive-bred one of its species. Its parents had been rescued as eggs from the Missouri River by Lincoln Park Zoo three years earlier.
At the time, fewer than 50 of the birds were thought to be left in Illinois.
June 6, 2001
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated 201 miles of shoreline around the Great Lakes — including a stretch of state park near Waukegan — as critical habitat for piping plovers.
Just two years later, wildlife officials counted 51 breeding pairs — up from 32 in 2001.
Summer 2015
A pair of piping plovers nested at Illinois Beach State Park in Lake County. The site was just 20 yards from where another pair tried to breed in 2009, but ultimately abandoned their nest.
Despite the male incurring an injury — likely by a coyote or peregrine falcon — four chicks hatched in a remote protected area along Lake Michigan. It was one of more than 70 breeding pairs recorded in the Great Lakes region in 2015.
That winter, one of the chicks was spotted more than 850 miles away in Georgia.
Summer 2016
Now adults, two chicks hatched the previous summer returned to nest in Lake County — this time just a half-mile away on the formerly asbestos-ridden Johns Manville property in Waukegan. Seven newly hatched chicks were spotted feeding on flies and invertebrates at the Superfund site.
Summer 2018
A clutch of piping plover eggs was salvaged from a nest on a parking lot along Waukegan Beach in June, transferred to an incubating site in Michigan, then returned to the wild after hatching.
The adult male and female parents, who were banded, were found at Montrose Harbor in Chicago, and then a week later, they were back in Waukegan.
Summer 2019
Three “little poof balls” became the first chicks hatched in Cook County in more than 60 years. Parents Monty and Rose saw the removal of their first clutch of eggs after they were no longer viable. The tiny birds also weathered a flooded home and Fourth of July fireworks, dodged volleyball players and hungry dogs, chased away a great blue heron, upended a music festival and even faced the death of one of their own before the family of four left their summer home.
Summer 2020
After wintering far away from Lake Michigan, Monty and Rose flew across the country to end up together again on the same patch of Chicago sand.
The plovers — weighing about a half stick of butter each — arrived on the same day, hours apart, and settled on an empty beach. They got to work fledging three chicks, a big deal for small birds once down to about a dozen nesting pairs.
Chicago naturalist and longtime Montrose Beach Dunes steward Leslie Borns said the birds’ return was validation of what the stewardship program and the Park District have been able to accomplish.
“To think that Monty and Rose survived the winter and their long spring migration and returned to this one place along the entire Lake Michigan coast!” Borns said in an email. “I am over the moon.”
Summer 2021
The Chicago Park District signed off on a habitat expansion of the Montrose dunes natural area, part of the beach where Monty and Rose successfully fledged chicks two summers in a row.
The pair traveled more than 2,000 miles to make it back to Chicago just one day apart. Nish, one of three chicks fledged by the pair in 2020, coupled up with a plover hatched in Pennsylvania at Maumee Bay State Park near Toledo, becoming one half of the first plovers to nest in Ohio in 83 years.
After the first clutch was devoured by a skunk, Monty and Rose watched three of their eggs in the second clutch hatch. The fourth egg was taken to Lincoln Park Zoo after the pair stopped incubating it. After hatching at the zoo, the chick was reintroduced to its parents and siblings at Montrose Beach.
The two chicks who survived the summer were named Imani and Siewka.
Summer 2022
Word began to spread about their long-awaited return.
“It’s like your kids coming back from college,” said Tamima Itani, of the Illinois Ornithological Society and a leader in Chicago’s plover effort.
The 2022 piping plover season began, however, in sorrow. Rose never returned from her wintering grounds. Then tragedy struck when Monty died.
“He was observed gasping for air before dropping and passing away,” Itani said. “Monty and Rose captured our hearts in a way very few beings do. Monty will be very sorely missed.”
Monty’s death meant son Imani spent six lonely weeks at Montrose Beach.
Despite the loss of the love birds, the season was considered a major success. The Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team announced a record-breaking 2022 breeding season, with 149 wild chicks reaching the fledgling — or flying — stage, the most since official counts began in 1984.
Summer 2023
Imani, son of Chicago’s beloved piping plovers Monty and Rose, was spotted on a quiet stretch of sand favored by shorebirds. He ate, took a bath at sunset, preened his white and dove-gray feathers, and fed some more.
He was little more than a year and a half, but he was old enough for a mate. However, there were only about 250 piping plovers summering around the Great Lakes, and many were already paired off.
For the first time ever in Illinois, captive-reared plovers — Searocket, Wild Indigo and Prickly Pear — were released at Montrose Beach in July 2023.
Summer 2024
For the second consecutive year, Imani returned to Montrose Beach Dunes on April 25. Birdwatchers saw the tiny bird in a standoff with one of the larger plovers, after which the killdeer flew away. Imani reclaimed his summer home — and he was flourishing. A second male piping plover — unofficially known as Green Dot — joined Imani. Despite options for suitors, female Searocket paired with Imani and four of their eggs hatched. The youngsters were grandchildren to Monty and Rose.
Three of four captive-reared piping plovers released in 2023 laid eggs in two places — one in Waukegan and another at Montrose Beach.
Summer 2025
Imani and Searocket have returned to Montrose Beach for their second nesting season, but they are not alone. In addition to Imani, Montrose has welcomed 2-year-old Pippin, a returning male from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and two other males, originally from Michigan, that were passing by. An egg has already been laid on Montrose Beach Dunes — a little more than a week since Imani and Searocket were reunited.
Pepper and Blaze — the captive-reared, federally endangered piping plover chicks released on a Lake County beach in 2023 — are back in Waukegan for the second year as breeding adults and the pair is already incubating a full clutch of four eggs.
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