After weekslong wait, piping plover Searocket returns to Chicago and partner Imani for the summer
Her name is Searocket and she is partner and co-parent to Imani — the piping plover son of local celebrity pair Monty and Rose — who had returned to his summering spot on Montrose Beach three weeks ago and anxiously awaited her return. Finally, she joined him Friday, just in time for their second nesting season.
'We're just so excited that Searocket is back. Happy Mother's Day to her,' said Tamima Itani, lead volunteer coordinator for Chicago Piping Plovers. 'We're so glad to have a mother back in our midst.'
The female plover comes home to competitive piping plover dating scene: 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.
But 2-year-old Searocket remains loyal. She has already indicated Imani will be her chosen mate again, according to Itani; she promptly chased away one of the male plovers from Michigan who had also arrived Friday. He hasn't been seen at the North Side beach since. Some birders have spotted him at 63rd Street Beach in Jackson Park on the city's South Side.
'Pippin, she'll tolerate,' Itani said. The monitors are hoping another female will show up for the Wisconsinite to woo.
Imani and Searocket nested last year and had four chicks, though only one survived. Necropsies performed by the Lincoln Park Zoo determined they had died from a 'failure to thrive,' essentially of natural causes, Itani said. In the span of five days, severe storms also prevented the chicks from feeding enough.
The surviving hatchling was named Nagamo, which means 'he/she sings' in Ojibwe, one of the languages spoken by the Anishinaabe people — whose traditional homeland the city of Chicago is located on. Nagamo hasn't returned yet, though this is not unusual for first-year returnees, who tend to come back in late May to early June. After migrating south for the winter, about a third of piping plovers hatched in the wild return to their birthplace during their first summer.
'It's a numbers game, right? So I would absolutely love for Nagamo to come back,' Itani said. 'He may not come back to Montrose, but it'd be wonderful to know that he made it. And wherever he chooses to be, that's fine. I would love to know that he's made it.'
Despite the nippy wind by the lake, Montrose Beach had a busy Sunday: families gathered on picnic blankets to celebrate Mother's Day, and seagulls, killdeer and red-winged blackbirds scoured for food among the waves that washed ashore. Looking like a fluffball, Imani scurried in between the larger birds.
'Males tend to be more feisty and Imani, in particular, is exponentially more feisty than anyone else,' Itani said. 'On Wednesday, I saw him chase a barn swallow, then a spotted sandpiper, then a killdeer, and then a Caspian tern.'
Since Searocket's arrival means nesting season will soon begin at the Montrose Beach Dunes, access in the 15.9-acre protected natural area at the southernmost point of the beach will be closed to the public starting Monday.
Leashed and off-leash dogs on the beach represent a threat to the tiny birds, so the volunteer monitors have been working with the Lincoln Park Zoo's Urban Wildlife Institute to roll out an educational and pledge program for dog owners to keep their pets in a designated area.
'All birds are very afraid of dogs,' Itani said. 'For shorebirds, the consequence is, that can dissuade them from nesting.'
Amid ongoing concerns about bird flu, Itani said there is no indicator that piping plovers are particularly at risk.
'But then again, we don't know what's happening on wintering grounds,' she said. 'So we definitely take precautions. If we find any dead bird on the beach, we're trying to throw it away.'
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Most piping plovers raised in captivity return to summer where they were released.
Searocket was one of three captive-reared chicks released in the beach's protected area in June 2023. The chicks had been collected from failed nests in New York state, transported to the University of Michigan's Biological Station near Pellston, Michigan, where they were raised by Detroit Zoo staffers.
In June 2019, when Monty and Rose began nesting, their story of love and resilience captured the hearts of countless Chicagoans. Imani hatched at Montrose in 2021. Then Monty died of a respiratory infection in 2022, just a month after Rose went missing.
The pair had been the first of the species to return to Chicago and the larger Cook County area in 71 years. In February 2024, 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.
Piping plovers are a federally protected endangered species native to the Great Lakes and known for pairing up to rear young. The Montrose Beach family is part of an ongoing effort to restore the region's piping plover population, which reached an all-time low of 13 pairs in the 1980s and has rebounded to around 80 breeding pairs thanks to recent conservation efforts.
Before the dramatic drop, 500 to 800 piping plover pairs nested in the Great Lakes, according to the Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team.
Itani said beachgoers can help the piping plovers have a good nesting season by cleaning up after themselves and picking up three additional pieces of trash before leaving, as well as giving the birds some space.
'(We are) asking people to stay really far back from the piping plovers so that they feel comfortable feeding and roosting,' she said. 'As chicks are growing … any feeding interruption is setting them back.'
adperez@chicagotribune.com
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