Chicago has always been a birding town, from the parks along the lake to the south side marshes of the Calumet and out to the forest reserves.

I know this because I was there, I grew up in the 1970s in an apartment down the street from the Chicago Academy Sciences.

One day when I was about 12, I climbed the mountainous front steps of that building and my life changed forever.

The lobby ceiling was painted to look like a bright autumn sky with dozens of migrating birds flying overhead.

It was love at first sight!

Soon enough, I was birding every week with Dr. William Beecher, the ornithologist and Director of the Museum who became a mentor to me.

We saw lots of great birds through the years, but nothing could prepare us for - the arrival of two little birds decades - later.

Yes [Music] [Music] To hear that species that's so sensitive and so dependent on such a specific ecosystem was returning, it's mind-boggling.

As far as a conservation perspective goes, for this to take place during the least environmental administration we've had in over 100 years.

Yeah, this is a triumph.

We won.

Anyone who came back this year, were already in love with Monty and Rose.

They were coming and checking on friends and relatives and celebrities.

People were really vested in them.

If you look back and you recognize that this is a species that was down to no more than a dozen pairs and now they've come up to a maximum about 76 pairs.

An individual pair does make a difference, Monty and Rose are exceptional.

One of the great things about Monty and Rose is that we know so much about them.

We know where they were born and we know the first time that they met and we know where they met.

If we're talking about protecting an endangered species, I think they make that personal and they make it really easy to understand.

Okay not only am I protecting a species, but I'm protecting Monty and Rose.

[Music] Foreign so they're completely intact.

No predator had gotten to them.

So here's a good nest them in a little bit to try and minimize how much they're moving around.

That's so cool!

Silver Lake is a very unique area.

It's this extremely vast dune area which you can't really get a concept for when you're just looking at a map, you have to be out there and when you're out there and you're down in a dune valley, if you look around on all sides of you it looks like you're in the middle of a desert somewhere you can't see anything around you other than sand.

[Music] An off-road vehicle area the ORV area here is an area where people can drive their trucks their ATVs, their four-wheelers, their dirt bikes, in this insane dune area.

[Music] You get this contrast between this protected pedestrian area and then you have this RV area, so it's a very interesting clash of what people want out of their recreation sites.

As a plover monitor, my responsibility is early in the season, I'm out scouting for nests.

So I'm looking for plover signs, any sign of plovers, coming back after migration.

Foraging on the beaches, maybe just some tracks in the sand and then after days and weeks I'm able to narrow down on where these birds are hanging out.

It helps that I have knowledge of previous years, where they have been nesting because they tend to go back to the same sites.

And then once I find a nest we enclose it to protect the eggs and the birds and then we set up a big - closed area to keep the public and dogs - out.

And then, beyond that, it's a lot of Sitting at the nest watching for nest changes, getting to interact with the public and teach them about the birds and throughout the whole season, we'll go into hatching and then banding and then the birds are off.

[Music] We run the project to try and reach the goal of 150 pairs of piping clovers and how we do that is all the things involved like exposures and closed areas and monitoring and banding and education.

[Music] My favorite bird is actually Yogi who is Monty's dad.

Every plover has a very distinct personality if you spend enough time around enough of them.

There's photos of shards of brown broken glass and a nest right in the middle of it.

They nested in a unusual spot but plovers will make do with what they have.

[Music] Rose was one of four in a clutch which all fledged off this beach in 2017 and the parents are Little Guy and Bahamamama.

I come out here a lot in the evenings and I heard this bird and I go okay there's some kind of shorebird out here besides the seagull.

I went looking and I could hear it yakking.

Nothing, nothing, then the next thing I know I'm out here in the road and it's right in front of me flapping its wings and yakking and I'm looking at it and I'm like "Oh it's got bands like piping clover, so I reported to Fish and Wildlife Service and they came here and said that was the first one that's been seen since the early '50s.

Well, that was 2015.

- And the next thing you know, there was - two out here we have a pair.

[Music] Next thing I know, we had an egg and the next day another egg, till we had the four and months later we had little babies running around out here and they're so stinking cute!

They're like little cotton balls with legs.

[Music] It's a lot of fun to be out here watching them, but it's also a lot of heartache.

People come out here with their dogs and they don't pay attention to the signs.

I'm always worrying, is somebody letting that dog loose?

Or if the storms come up on the lake, how do they survive?

I think a lot of times there's sad things and hard things that happen, but there's always something hopeful that's going on somewhere in the project so that's what keeps you going.

Like now, they are at their wintering grounds, are they okay?

It's never totally gone, and even in the off season people are emailing me about histories of birds and so there's always a little bit of plover in my world.

You wait through the winter and come early spring when I can get back out here and watch and listen and that first hearing of them every spring is like okay, it's on again!

Monty and Rose both hatched in Michigan, one in Silver Lake State Park and the other one Muskegon State Park.

And in their hatch here, they both traveled to Waukegan Beach and they met walking on beach and I actually met both of them at Waukegan Beach.

They then nested at Waukegan Beach in 2018.

I first met Monty and Rose in Waukegan last May.

I was alerted in ebird that there was a pair of plovers showing courtship behavior down in the gravel parking lot which is an overflow of the beach parking lot in Waukegan.

I went down there and then I actually became involved with monitoring them because they nested in that gravel parking lot.

It was a very unusual setting for the - plovers.

It wasn't actually on the - beach, but rather in a large parking lot Which had historically been an industrial site.

Right from the beginning, we had concerns about the location of the nest the viability of the nest.

What we did was set up a beach stewardship program which is a partnership with the city of Waukegan.

It's called "Sharing Our Shore Waukegan".

We really wanted to educate the public about just how special it was, not just because of the turns and the plovers but all the rare plants that are down there and the wide variety of bird species.

The IDNR actually roped off that area, put up signs, and they put the cage over the nest.

- Even though it was a completed nest with - four eggs, the nest had been caged and we Had done everything we could.

The parking lot was just an area that could not be safely secured from the public coming in.

We had people coming in and doing donuts at night in the vehicles and we just knew that the nest would not be successful.

I noticed that there was car tracks within the roped off area, so I was reporting all this back to the IDNR and the IDNR and US Fish and Wildlife made the decision to salvage those eggs.

They actually asked me to photograph the egg salvage, which was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

Rose was on the nest and she was obviously very distressed as they took the eggs away and was doing the broken wing display and I was trying to photograph the whole thing whilst balling my eyes out.

[Music] And that was taken to the facility up in Pelston, Michigan.

Three of the four eggs did hatch successfully.

[Music] You [Music] when I first heard the news I honestly couldn't believe it at first.

I didn't know how to react, whether it was excitement as well I know the reality of it and just recognizing the juxtaposition of this speech I wasn't sure whether it was a naivete that that I appreciated that.

Sure we'll see how this goes.

[Music] When people first saw the plovers starting to make little scratches in the sand and then people said, "Well, maybe they will nest here".

And we said yes when they moved here to nest, I think a lot of people were like, "No way this is not going to happen" and even I might have been like, "Good luck with that."

We've always had one or two that would maybe pass through Chicago every year and every time it happens it was always uh everybody freak out "There's plovers on XY beach.

"Well it was like," Oh my goodness, will they survive," you know will they be able to fledge on such a highly used and active beach?

We're just setting up things when we we learned that the female or Rose is down here at Montrose.

And there was a few weeks we were a lot of uncertainty of where they're going to end up ultimately but monty ended up coming down here to Montrose and the two of them established the repair bond again which was reestablished from their 2018 breeding effort.

And the first nesting effort was recorded here on the beach and that's when all the wheels started going into motion.

For them to pick a spot where it wasn't going to conflict with humans was basically impossible.

The first thing that went through my mind is we have to protect these uh these nests and I remember at the time, there was no enclosure.

It was just open to anyone to walk around, it was just something we were so totally unprepared for.

In just trying to visualize how best to protect this nesting site and understanding that - we were there on a weekday and it was - relatively poor weather conditions and Knowing that suddenly as soon as there was a first nice day just how that foot traffic was going to double if not triple that first location that the plovers chose was from a people standpoint a crazy location Monty had actually done his goose stepping and was approaching uh Rose and so we knew that that mating was going to be very very shortly.

I was very concerned with just how busy this beach is and when I learned that they had nested in an area prone to flooding, I was very worried.

On June 12, Rose was on the nest the four eggs had been laid and and everything looked so peaceful it looked like we were going to have a successful nesting experience.

[Music] As we started looking at the forecast for the rest of the day it was high winds torrential rains.

But even more concerning, a strong storm surge from the lake and there was already a lot of water on the beach and there was a good - chance that the water would rise to - cover the nest.

So it's been raining on and off for a couple of hours now and we're worried about the water coming closer to Monty and Rose's nest one of the fears is that they'll abandon the nest if it goes underwater.

And it's likely to rain even more this afternoon, it's really not sure what will happen I looked and saw the waves building on Lake Michigan we knew we were in trouble.

And sure enough, I looked at the weather - reports and they were calling for 35 to - 40 mile an hour north winds.

[Music] Overnight a big storm came in and the water washed way up onto the beach and inundated onto Rose's nest.

[Music] It was very distressing to me.

The four eggs were removed around 6 pm that day.

By the next morning, the nest was under a foot of water, so it was definitely the right decision to make.

Unfortunately, that first nest had to be salvaged because the lake levels did rise at night and washed out.

[Music] [Music] I didn't actually think that there would be another nest partly because the whole beach was underwater.

- I just wasn't sure where that was going - to happen again.

One day, we realized that they were interested in the volleyball court area which is an area that makes so much sense from a nesting standpoint because it's high and dry in all the storms that we had that area wasn't under water.

When they actually scraped their final and second nest inside the ripped off area where the bank swallows nest, it looked extremely promising.

They laid the first egg and then they laid the second egg and this time because it was a second clutch, IDNR and Fish and Wildlife Service decided to put the exclosure after the second egg.

Usually they like to wait to the third or fourth egg, but Rose still went ahead and laid the third - and fourth egg and incubation started on - June 24th.

[Music] To party or not to party that is the question facing several groups near the lakefront on the city's north side.

Promoters are planning a big music festival on Montrose Beach called "Mamby On the Beach" but the event has drawn opposition from a few local organizations who are concerned about traffic beach access and some endangered - birds that have recently made the beach - home.

I started covering the story because I cover the Chicago Park District and there was controversy bubbling about this music festival that was slated for Montrose Beach it was going to be the first time that it was there.

I learned that at the center of everything were these two little birds I didn't know what a piping clover was I had no idea what I was looking for I kind of came into a blind and so each step along the way.

I was learning as much about the birds.

As i was about everything else that was happening in relation to the story, we got a request through the Park District from the promoter of the festival to have a meeting to discuss what they could do or how they could assure that the beach would be appropriately used if they were to have their Mamby Festival here had that happen.

I had a motorcycle club that shall go nameless we were going to send 100 soldiers and we were going to guard the perimeter of that nesting site and believe me you buddy nobody would have violated that nesting site.

First of all i'm a pro clover pro plover right pro plover we do not want to disturb any bird any habitat.

We had found out from the Park District maybe now it's two weeks ago that the beach is probably going to be underwater due to high lake levels in august and this festival is in late August.

Yeah so, we're making plans to move it into the - park does that help if it's in the park - so you know obviously any movement away From the beach would help.

But, the problem is is that the numbers that are being discussed for this concert you know exceeding 40,000 people over two days.

There's just no realistic way to control that amount of people.

You know these uh this population of piping clovers is too valuable to simply risk it.

There are dozens and dozens of wonderful places uh you can get outdoor music in Chicago but there's only one that these piping clovers nested.

I'd say I'm actually kind of disappointed in that the narrative even became known as the concert versus the birds.

[Music] I don't know why the Park District, why they were not absolutely adamant about enforcing the protections inherent in the bird sanctuary.

I look at them as the real villains in this and then I got really angry and i went on social media and I hold up - a picture that said move the Mamby At - the Beach Festival.

Every nothing pair in the population is critical in order to maintain the viability of this population.

So the Endangered Species Protection Act was established in 1973 and with that law comes a lot of federal guidelines and protection but we recognize right from the beginning that we didn't want to come in and say, "Yeah the feds are going to come in the state's going to come in."

The first thing we try to do is work with the Park District work with the local organizations work with the local volunteers what can we do to cooperatively work to try to get this clover hair to be successful - i am very happy that man be at the beach - and jam decided to cancel i'm glad that Somebody realized just what was at [Music] First thing I stake [Music] [Music] Having the USDA and his staff helping us monitor the nest with a remote controled camera so that we could turn on the cameras anytime that we wanted to and also they were motion activated cameras and so we were able to to pick up what kind of activity occurred directly at the nest site.

That first night the incubating bird would come off the nest at 10 o'clock - 10:30, 11 o'clock all throughout the night.

But, we couldn't tell where the bird was coming off the nest for, so we actually established a secondary camera that was just a little bit further back so that we could get a broader view of the nesting area and that second camera was quite revealing.

All night long there were skunks passing by the nest.

There were raccoons passing by the nest.

On one occasion there was a stray dog that went running by the nest.

[Music] Can he be trusted?

[Music] When it was the Fourth of July, we were worried about fireworks.

All those volunteers were great, they were telling me where the fireworks were at, where they were coming from and we were letting people know, "Hey you know we got endangered birds over here, you're going to scare them off."

The nest so it was that critical period, we didn't want them to fly off one of the days i was out here was fourth of july and the beaches tend to get very packed and full of activity and I was out here for I think almost 10 hours through most of the day into the afternoon and evening.

And while there's obvious threats associated with that, I mean there were tons and tons of people around there, where fireworks going off right throughout the day even before it was dark there were also numerous people who were just really thrilled and excited to hear about what was going on and that was a really powerful moment for, I think all of us.

- You could just tell that the amount of - activity at that nest site certainly Would have been a nesting failure if that cage hadn't been in place [Music] The sun is rising, waves are lapping at the shore.

What does our future hold, if I can't find them anymore?

[Music] And now they're coming like they do all the time big ones taken over this space till there's no room for me and mine.

[Music] And i try to adjust but it's harder each day you can't see what I am or hear what I have to say.

I'm a gift but you throw me away we had to really make sure that they survived this environment after they hatched and they started moving around that probably was the most stressful time, because basically they're these cute little fluff balls, but that's all they can do run around they can't fly you know their parents can only do so much to defend them.

What we're worried about is not necessarily as much the chicks being afraid of people but stopping to feed even with a hundred and whatever people it was protecting them I was still concerned for the survival of the chicks.

The number of predators, a number of threats just increased many times over as soon as those birds left that cage nearby.

We had the gulls that could very quickly come down swoop down and grab a chick and fly off with it.

Crows could be passing by, great blue herons, blacktron night herons.

There are known mink in the area, there's foxes in the area, coyotes in the area.

Once they hatch, they leave the nest and so they wouldn't retreat back to the safety of that cage.

I noticed there was a shape in the flooded area where the plovers had been hanging out in.

I last saw them before the sun went down that wasn't there before and sure enough it was a black crown night heron that had somehow snuck his way into the flooded area without anybody noticing, myself included.

So I had to rush out there with a flashlight and flashing around and try to get it to fly out of that space.

One thing that was absolutely amazing was the plover's ability to take care of themselves and their chicks.

We helped them a lot, but I think they really took care of themselves.

Be it Monty or Rose, they were seen and photographed chasing gulls, chasing mallards, the two of them ganged up on a great blue heron and chased great blue heron one day.

12 little killdeers came into the enclosed area and the chicks were still here and Monty went after every single killdeer there one at a time.

We thought we would have to intervene, he actually had a line and would go in a line and move one killdeer after the other closer to the outside of the enclosure until finally they were all outside of the enclosure.

It was just masterful!

Rose was as ferocious as Monty when she needed to be.

I have pictures of her going after girls but it was like karate moves.

I mean those girls had no chance, they had to leave.

Can you see them?

People were really rooting for these lovers to succeed.

They wanted to make it so we started seeing a lot of volunteers email and sign up to get two out of the three surviving is just an incredible success.

I didn't have high hopes of them all surviving.

I saw the picture of Rose come across my facebook page and when I saw the band combination I knew it was out of the beach in Muskegon and contacted them and they said it was rolled from 2017 and that was like really I've heard of a couple of them before being sited somewhere but this was the first time that there was a picture and there was a story behind it and obviously the story has grown.

[Music] Considering that Yogi is my favorite bird, I love hearing stories about his offspring.

And to know that his offspring are living on and being productive and it's very exciting to have chicago that's just amazing with the skyline in the background and just a beautiful beach that they have there with a piping plover nest on it, it just makes us think if this can happen here we can make this happen anywhere reall.

You know this is a huge city and there's all kinds of predators, there's people all the time, and all kinds of emergency situations that could happen.

To a little plover, it wasn't a disappointment to me because I know Leslie Born, the steward here, and all the other people that have worked so hard to protect and restore this area and it was just so exciting that they nested here.

Because I think there was much more of a chance of success Monty and Rose are exceptional especially Rose.

She laid eight eggs!

The effort that it takes to go out there and produce four eggs taken by the high water and then you find a new nest site and lay four more eggs.

These birds have been tremendous ambassadors to birding to birds to having wildlife within your city from there they had a day named after them.

We saw shirts!

This summer we had a beer you just kind of saw this cascading effect and a story that we could kind of claim as our own and say this happened here on this crowded beach against all odds these two little birds were really successful.

You have these two very small birds underdogs up against any number of challenges and to watch them at the end pledge a few chicks it was a great story this was one in the win column in in the age of Trump you know this is one where the environment won.

[Music] A lot of people have asked why the plovers showed up here?

The fact is that a lot of work has gone into making Montrose more hospitable for birds.

In the 70s.

it was nothing like it is now.

Mostly construction rubble with a few scraggly trees.

Montrose Point was not the bird sanctuary it is today.

San Pancho's Point Bird Sanctuary itself wasn't there 30 years ago.

We've always had the sense of migratory birds being attracted to Montrose Point, with the nature preserve the Montrose Beach Dunes over on the east end.

It's an area that gets a lot less traffic and it's become hospitable for nesting birds, killdeer nests, there spotted sandpipers nest there.

I understand that there was a pair of Sora rails that nested there and of course Monty and Rose chose the nest there.

[Music] I really started out as a birder.

I didn't know very much about plants, although I was learning and studying what was happening out here I certainly had no experience being a steward of a natural area you know the rest is history.

She has just been an exceptional champion for the dunes and has worked tirelessly and non-stop and the dunes would for sure not be where they are today without what it is that Leslie has done here in Chicago.

The conservation community has been so strong here for such a long time but so many of these natural areas especially our coastal natural areas are still pretty new they have only been around for anywhere from 10 to 20 years tops which in a restoration and ecological landscape is pretty small.

It just kind of kept growing as the habitat got more complex and there were more tasks to do it seemed like more people wanted to help people really have a strong need and desire to connect with nature in cities and that seemed to be part of that process of attracting people here that the site itself really did a lot of that for me.

[Music] There's also something called the seed bank theory which is that at one time when the area was vegetated and then lake levels rose, and the sand became part of the bottom of the lake.

It was under water many seeds can be preserved for hundreds and hundreds of years and so if the sand is exposed again to the sunlight and when lake levels go back down then some of those plants can grow.

There's probably some combination of all these factors at work.

Leslie's been doing a great job maintaining this habitat and getting all the native plants back here restoring the habitat to its natural state.

If you give wildlife an opportunity, - it will come if you give them a space.

- [Music] So [Music] while we held each other through these ever changing hours [Music] I was hoping that they would return.

I was also panicking because Montrose was closed and I was really anxious whether we would be able to see them or not.

In my mind, it would have been a disaster if we couldn't see them.

After last season, I think many of us - really wondered whether we'd see those - birds again.

I have to give great credit To the Chicago Park District, they understood that no one could come to Montrose to check on the presence of the plovers.

They took pictures whenever they could.

The Chicago Park District, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, they did everything they could to get feed back information on Monte and Rose and what they were doing anytime that they went to Montrose and checked on them eventually the Chicago Park District did allow us to go in and monitor them.

[Music] Last year, there was a lot of conflict coming from different groups.

This year, all of that kind of disappeared... the birds weren't up against anything.

They had the beach to themselves.

They were on their own and so the story became much more just about I think their natural challenges and then I also think you know last year it was this underdog story whereas this summer - I do think a lot of people look to their - story as a bright spot and as a reminder Of what it looks like to be resilient.

I remember my first trip to Montrose this summer and of course I think we all were so used to what Montrose Beach was like and to see it completely empty.

It's kind of eerie and to see Monty and Rose completely on their own.

That was a reminder of everything that they had to deal with last summer and i think put in perspective a little bit more just how much they did overcome and how much they were able to accomplish.

- This was a year that had much less drama - than last year except for when Rose's Eye got injured.

Rose's eye got injured most probably in a fight with killdeer.

But, fortunately she recovered very very quickly.

In 2020, Monty and Rose fletched three chicks: Esperanza, Hazel, and Nish.

And all three birds were seen on the wintering grounds.

But, the plovers that year did something else too they brought an entire community together during the pandemic and cemented their place in Chicago lore as a conservation success story of a lifetime.

It continues to be a win in the face of the pandemic but gave us a huge boost of confidence in that we can change the ecology and the ecosystem of our city for the better.

We can make it more green, we can make it more environmentally friendly.

We're acting in the most enlightened of self-interest when we protect the ecosystem and the birds and the animals.

We needed Monty and Rose more than Monty and Rose needed us!

They just pulled us out of our misery and our craziness and pandemic and whatever and they just brought us back to something that's more hopeful, more fun.

We were able to focus on something where we could look forward to nesting we could look forward to chicks that was really [Music] amazing.

I am I may look small but my will to go on to shock you all the thoughts may come with the rising sun will show me where to start again [Music] do [Music] [Music] My The whole organized effort where we had a broad array of individuals with a lot of different interests in the natural life here in the city coming out and helping these two birds survive.

I would even go so far as to say that a better representation from the broad community than necessarily from within the dedicated die-hard esoteric wing of the bird watchers.

It was moving, it was really moving, I remember being out on Montrose Beach when the chicks were declared to have been fledged.

It brought tears to my eyes.

These natural spaces and natural habitat, it's not a privilege, it's a right that everybody has all Chicagoans should have the right to come out here and enjoy this and see what's been created that's what makes this area so special.

People are going to see what we accomplished as a community as a city and when the next time something like this does happens we're going to be that much more prepared for it and it's going to forever change the fabric of how we see ourselves as a community.

We're just getting more and more people involved in the whole journey which is great.

That's what Chicago shows if that's going to happen with just a plover it can happen with all kinds of species and issues, for that matter, not even just conserving a plover we need to continue to fight for these natural interests.

Whether it's plovers or the next endangered species that comes along, the world is changing the environment on this planet is a shadow of what it once was.

It's up to us to give them that space considering that they didn't have the space because of us.

I think that we have a future where we - can have both: where the Mamby's can - still happen without also at the expense Of the wildlife.

That we call this planet home with people and volunteers who have been birders for 20 30 40 years who have said this has been their most meaningful experience in their birding life.

My dream is to have this spread over the whole Great Lakes area and every small piece of beach that we can have some kind of stewardship program in place.

Should any endangered birds, not just the plovers, choose to nest in these areas there's so little habitat left for these birds.

And we have to share that with them and it's all about educating people how to do that.

[Music] And it is an amazing phenomenon what Monty and Rose have done not only for awareness and for this area but just just just for kids we are a city in the garden and this is a big part of what we are, these natural areas and volunteers.

Oh yeah [Music] they never seem to hear [Music] and then the harder they come [Music] oh [Music] and they think [Music] mine [Music] oh yeah [Music] oh yeah [Music] one [Music] [Music] across the road [Music] I must escape [Music] [Music] a plane ticket try to break.