I've been saying I need to do a write up about these birds for a while now and the recent good news finally pushed me to do it. What good news? No spoilers.
But first, let's set the stage.
In fair Montrose, where we lay our scene
If you follow me here you may already know that the Chicago Park District administers and maintains "natural areas" in several of its parks. Now, most of the stewardship is done by volunteers, but at least they give us supplies and don't arrest us when we dig random holes in public property. I've posted before about volunteering (and why you should volunteer somewhere local to you), because it rules and it's fun.
There's around 150 "natural areas" and one of the most well-established ones is Montrose Beach Dunes. It's built entirely on landfill, like most of the Chicago shoreline (all those burned-down buildings had to go somewhere). The land was originally intended for military barracks, but once they tore those down, they left the honeysuckle they'd planted. Now honeysuckle is invasive, but there was nothing else there, and the birds loved it. Slowly, the city started to plant natives around there and trying to improve the ecology of the area. It eventually became the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, the place to ogle at birds during migration. The patch of honeysuckle became the "Magic Hedge," because there's been 300 species of migratory birds recorded there and birders are a lot of things but "creative with names" isn't one of them. Also in the sanctuary, you'll find the Magic Clump and the Tangle.
Montrose Beach Dunes is right next to it, and it used to be a groomed beach for people to hang out and pretend Lake Michigan is not cold as balls well into June. In 2001 the city stopped grooming it and, with the help of volunteers and lake currents, native plants started taking root, sand began accumulating and now there's dunes and a rare panne ecosystem, which is globally vulnerable.
As part of Lincoln Park, the city's largest public park (1,208 acres, eat your heart out, New York's Central Park, with your puny 843 acres and no globally rare panne ecosystems), Montrose Beach is a popular spot in the summer. Chicagoans and tourists alike love to visit the museums, the one random mausoleum left over from when the park was a cemetery, the bird sanctuary, and of course, the beach. Chicago has like three weeks of summer so of course the parks plan Activities and Events as soon as you can go out without getting frostbite. Come for the music festivals, stay for the volleyball tournaments!
Why is all of this context important? Because Monty and Rose are not just a love story, they're a story of hope. Hope that we can fix this. We can walk away from the ledge, we can change our environment for the better as well. You need to understand that a few decades ago, this land didn't exist. And a few years ago, it was a flat, sterile stretch of sand. And today it's a precious, rare ecosystem that shelters endangered species and it's an oasis for thousands and thousands of migratory birds every season. And that's where Monty and Rose landed in 2019. Well, sort of.
Summer of Love
Two nameless birds had no idea about any of this, because they were birds. Him, a Texan boy. Her, escaping Florida. They both felt the pull to fly North at the same time and, for some unknown reason, decided to come our way.
So in the summer of 2019, for the first time in 71 years, two Great Lakes Piping Plovers were spotted in Chicago. Great Lakes Piping Plovers are endangered. Really endangered. Less than 200 left in the wild endangered. This was a big deal. It was a bigger deal for the Plovers, I think. They wintered in different areas, imagine flying across the country by yourself, landing on a place that your kind has not visited in generations and finding the only other one of your species there. And they're hot.
They took a liking to each other and immediately started nesting on a random parking lot in Waukegan, which didn't work out. They moved to Montrose Beach... next to the protected natural area. Like, right next to it. But outside, on what was technically a public beach. Fortunately for them, as one of only 70 mated pairs of Great Lakes PIPL in existence, they were turbo-protected by federal and state law, as well as local ordinances. This is on top of the protective fury of every conservationist in the state, fully ready to kill and die for these guys. Not that it was necessary, because the city fenced off the area (around 3 acres) where they nested and liked to forage. A music festival was cancelled and the volleyball tournament had to be moved. But it was fine because look at these little guys, we loved them already and named them Monty and Rose (the creativity of birders). When I say we loved them, I mean at least 150 people volunteered to monitor them, they had to turn volunteers down (the conservationists, not the birds).
Oblivious to all of this, Monty and Rose successfully nested and fledged two chicks, the first ones to be born in the county in 71 years. Unfortunately, the chicks were not banded so their current whereabouts are unknown.
Same time next year?
Piping Plovers are migratory, and they tend to return to the same areas every winter and summer. They are monogamous during the nesting season, but may switch it up every year. Unless there's literally nobody else around, I guess.
Like I said, Monty and Rose wintered in different areas, so as soon as Fall winds started picking up, he went to Texas, she went to Florida. But in the summer of 2020, they both returned to Montrose Beach! And they still liked each other, so they nested again.
As you may remember, in 2020 we pretended to care about an airborne pandemic for a few weeks, so there were no events on the beach and people stayed home. More space for the Plovers. This time they fledged three chicks: Hazel, Esperanza and Nish (there was a fourth one, but it didn't survive). Nish followed the family's pioneering tradition and went to Ohio, where it met Nellie and they became the first PIPL pair to successfully breed in the state in 83 years.
In 2021, we saw Monty and Rose return for a third time. By now, several conservancy organizations had been working to improve the area and organize volunteer Plover Monitors and lobby to get the city to make the natural area extension permanent. This time, there were two chicks: Siewka and Imani. Imani kept another family tradition alive: he started summering at Montrose Beach.
This is the sad bit
In 2022, Monty returned to Montrose Beach, to everyone's delight. Imani returned too! But Rose never did. We don't know what happened to her. We know that she left Florida and never made it to Chicago. Worse, a few weeks after arriving, Monty started acting sluggish. He died. Autopsy determined a respiratory infection.
And so, Imani was left as the lone PIPL on all of Montrose Beach.
I am not exaggerating when I say people were devastated. There was a memorial service for both Monty and Rose, hundreds of people attended or left offerings. The little guy meant so much. Both of them did. They got more people interested in conservation, they made it so the city and NGOs prioritized improving their habitat, which also benefited a whole bunch of other species. They made it so different conservation groups started collaborating not just in the city but across state lines. They inspired conservation and education efforts in Chicago and elsewhere. Their chicks went on to nest in other places, prompting conservation efforts there, too. And, importantly, they were a very palpable sign that we were doing something right. That all the efforts to improve the natural area were worth it, that if we bring back habitats, we can bring back the critters that live in them.
Imani spent the rest of the summer doing everything he could to attract a mate. He flew over his territory, doing aerial displays and hoping to be spotted by a female. He walked the boundary of his territory, making sure no other plover trespassed. He scrapped little nest spots with his chest and piped as loud as he could... Of course, there was nobody to hear him, nobody to join. At the end of summer he caught a cold wind from the north and rode it south.
In 2023, undeterred, he came back! No other GLPIPL showed up, but some other kinds of plovers stopped by for rest and food before moving on. Montrose (and Chicago in general) is kind of that amazing truck stop with the clean bathrooms and non-disgusting food on a cross-country trip, but for migratory birds.
Meanwhile, three nests in New York lost an incubating adult, which meant the eggs would fail. Conservationists rescued the eggs and transported them to Michigan, to be hatched and reared in captivity, under the experienced watch of Detroit Zoo staff. They do this often and then release the fledged chicks back into the wild. Usually, somewhere in Michigan.
But these three were different, they decided to release them outside of Michigan for the first time. You guessed it, in collaboration with Federal and State agencies, as well as conservation organizations in both states, the three captive-reared chicks were released at Montrose Beach Dunes. The efforts of everyone that helped restore the area, keep it clean and safe from people and dogs are paying off!
We loved them immediately. We named them Sea Rocket, Wild Indigo, and Prickly Pear, after three important native plants to the Dune habitat. Plovers often return to the same beach where they spend their first summer, so the hope was that, if they spent the rest of the summer here, when they migrated again the following year, at least one of them would choose to come back. We even dared hope at least one of them was female (plovers are hard to sex when they're juvenile).
The three had a great summer, foraged, scuttered around, cuddled each other to take naps in the sun and were incredibly adorable. Imani was mostly confused and marked his territory to keep them out, but eventually he kind of shrugged and kept to himself. He continued doing mating displays for nobody, scoping the best nesting spots and being the most attractive male plover on the beach, hoping a female plover would eventually notice him.
Fall came around, Imani left, so did the chicks. Sea Rocket was the last one to leave. Unfortunately, right as it was flying away, the monitors saw it had fishing line tangled around its legs. They tried to capture it for six hours but it evaded capture and eventually flew over the lake. It was devastating, fishing line injuries are often fatal to birds (dispose of your fishing lines properly, please!). Sea Rocket would likely lose a limb or worse: never make it to its destination.
Piping Plovers 2: Legacy
In February of 2024 the city and the Park district named the now permanent expansion to the natural area: the Monty and Rose Wildlife Habitat.
Imani came back! It's summer 2024 and once more the boy is strutting and scraping and being the Best Plover. Better than the Other Guy. Oh, right, there's another plover! Not a Chicago native, this male is from Cat Island. This means the habitat is attracting more plovers. At first we called him Green Dot because of his leg bands, but that felt rude, so we reached out to Cat Island to ask for a name, and they named him Pippin. Yes he's another male, and the boys spent a few days "parallel walking" to mark their territory. This is adorable behavior with huge plover stakes: they walk shoulder to shoulder on the boundary of their territory, kind of drawing a line in the sand.
Something else was different this year: a third plover flew in. A third plover with female coloring. A third plover with leg bands we recognized.... Sea Rocket! Not only did she survive the fishing line, she did it without injuring her legs! And she had two handsome boys competing for her attention.
Yeah she started hanging out with Imani immediately. Didn't even look at Pippin. This gal shrugged off what could have been a horrible injury or harrowing death to fly thousands of miles and come back just to see her MAN. They spent a few days looking at prospective nesting sites.... and yesterday we confirmed an egg.
Hopefully in a month we'll see Monty and Rose's grandchildren hatch near their memorial habitat and spend the summer scuttering about the beach, hiding under their parents' wings and learning to fly.
Hope some of them fly off to be the first ones to nest somewhere else. Hope some of them come back. I hope we love them enough to keep doing all of this.
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