Get your binoculars! Piping plover season is back at Montrose Beach.
Two banded piping plovers were spotted Friday morning by Mark Kolasa, the Montrose Beach Dunes volunteer community steward, according to the @ChicagoPiping social media account that chronicles the lovebirds. One of the birds is Pippin, and the other is Uncle Larry, according to the account.
The piping plovers have captured Chicagoans’ imagination since 2019, when two Great Lakes piping plovers came to nest at Montrose, becoming the first to return to Chicago and the larger Cook County area in seven decades. They were Monty and Rose, and their story of love and resilience soared into the hearts of countless Chicagoans, inspiring conservation efforts, documentaries and merchandise.
In 2022, Monty died of a respiratory infection, just a month after Rose went missing. The Chicago Park District memorialized Monty and Rose by renaming a section of the Montrose Dunes Natural Area as the Monty and Rose Wildlife Habitat.
Pippin hatched in the Green Bay, Wisconsin, area in 2023 and visited Chicago last summer but did not end up in a mating pair. He’s back this year to throw a feather in the ring of Chicago’s bird bachelor dating game.
Uncle Larry is a 2023 Waugoshance, Michigan, hatch who may or may not be following new Bears coach Ben Johnson down to town. Uncle Larry didn’t breed last year, but showed up in early July in the Upper Peninsula, where it appeared to be trying to woo the nesting females that already had chicks, according to @ChicagoPiping.
The Great Lakes piping plovers population dropped to 13 pairs in the 1980s but has reached 70 breeding pairs in recent years.
Chicago Tribune’s Adriana Perez contributed.
