Another year, another chance to relish in Chicago’s favorite feathered fanfare.
That’s right, piping plover season is back at Montrose Beach.
In a double-whammy day for the city’s bird watchers and enthusiasts, two plovers were spotted at Montrose on Monday: Imani — the son of Chicago’s famed piping plover pair Monty and Rose — and Pippin, a Wisconsin transplant who’s been frequenting Illinois since 2024.
Pippin made his 2026 debut first, catching local volunteers’ attention in the afternoon, followed by Imani a few hours later. According to the @ChicagoPiping social media account, which chronicles the latest in all things Chicago piping plovers, the birds were already back scrapping with each other to establish their territory on Montrose as of Monday night.
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“It literally made my day,” said Tamima Itani, lead volunteer coordinator for the Chicago Piping Plovers, which monitors the birds to ensure their safety. Itani spoke to the Tribune over the phone early Monday night as she drove out to spot Pippin for herself. “I definitely wasn’t planning on being at Montrose this evening … but I really wanted to see (him).”
Local piping plover sightings have garnered doting fervor since 2019, when beloved pair Monty and Rose became the first piping plovers to live in Chicago in more than 70 years. Their love story and legacy have been a subject of annual excitement ever since. After Monty’s death in 2022 and Rose’s disappearance the same year, attention turned to Imani, who in recent years has regaled the city with hatchlings of his own with mate Searocket.
Once abundant on the Great Lakes shores and North Atlantic coast, the seabirds were decimated by habitat loss throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, leaving only about a dozen breeding pairs by the 1980s. But, thanks to efforts to reintroduce captive piping plovers into the wild and conserve their natural habitat, their local numbers have seen a resurgence in recent years.
Last year, there were 88 breeding pairs across the Great Lakes, according to Itani.
Pippin first started flocking to Imani’s turf two years ago. Initially known as the “Green Dot,” Pippin hatched in the Green Bay, Wisconsin, area in 2023 and began visiting Chicago a year later. He’s been dropping by Montrose and Illinois Beach State Park in north suburban Zion in search of a mating pair but so far hasn’t found the one, Itani said.
“My biggest hope … is for him to have a mate and to nest this year,” Itani said. “He deserves it.”
Pippin’s homecoming is especially sweet after an unnerving departure from the area last summer. Just before he left to head back to his wintering grounds, he was spotted with a piece of hair caught around his foot. Volunteers weren’t able remove the hair, and they worried he wouldn’t be able to survive the injury.
But Pippin came back all right — albeit with only one foot — much to volunteers’ relief.
“He’s a survivor and a fighter,” Itani said.
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Brad Semel, an endangered species recovery specialist for the Illinois Department of National Resources, said it’s a highlight of the spring to see piping plovers return to the region, knowing they survived the winter and the thousands of miles it took to travel back.
“There certainly is a lot of excitement,” Semel said just as news started to spread that Imani had joined Pippin at Montrose.
Imani returns to the city after a fruitful nesting season last year, which brought him and Searocket three new hatchlings. Searocket returned to Chicago in May last year, Itani said, noting volunteers hope — as they do every season — to see her back again soon.
Also yet to make a local appearance: Blaze and Pepper, the state’s only other known plover couple who’ve been mainstays of Waukegan for the past couple of years. According to the Lake County Audubon Society, Blaze and Pepper have both been recently spotted at their wintering grounds — Blaze in North Carolina and Pepper in Florida.
Keep your binoculars handy, Chicago.
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