Imani at Montrose Beach, April 2023. (Matthew Dolkart)
Wildlife officials are reporting that the season’s first Great Lakes piping plover, known as YibBee, has returned to his breeding grounds at Sleeping Bear Dunes. Will arrivals in Chicago be far behind?
The watch is on at Montrose Beach — where famous lovebirds Monty and Rose successfully nested for three consecutive years — as well as known plover stomping grounds including 57th Street Beach and Illinois Beach State Park.
According to Tamima Itani, coordinator of Chicago’s plover monitors, Michigan and Wisconsin piping plovers typically arrive a week or two before Illinois plovers.
Sleeping Bear Dunes has long been a stronghold for Great Lakes piping plovers, whose numbers once plummeted to fewer than 20 breeding pairs before the birds were listed as federally endangered in 1986. Loss of habitat has been a major contributor to the plovers’ decline.
Chicago monitors will be on the lookout for Imani, one of Monty and Rose’s surviving chicks. Imani has returned to Montrose Beach two years running but has yet to lure a mate.
In summer 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released three captive-reared piping plover chicks at Montrose and four at Illinois Beach in the hopes they would return to the area in 2024.
Great Lakes piping plovers spend the winter in the southern U.S. Among the many wonders of Monty and Rose’s improbable love story was the duo’s arrival at Montrose Beach within days of one another, despite migrating from separate winter grounds — Monty winging in from Texas while Rose flew in from Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]
