Monty and Rose chick survives migration and becomes first piping plover to nest in Ohio in more than 80 years

Like father, like chick.

The Great Lakes piping plovers who amassed a series of successes since becoming the first of the endangered shorebirds to nest in Chicago in decades can add another feather to their caps — one of last year’s offspring survived migration and is nesting in Ohio.

Taking after his parents Monty and Rose, Nish, one of three chicks fledged from Montrose Beach last year, coupled up with a plover hatched in Pennsylvania at Maumee Bay State Park near Toledo, becoming one half of the first plovers to nest in Ohio in 83 years.

As of Tuesday, the nest had one egg. A few more are expected to fill out the clutch. Nish’s nesting site has some similarities with Montrose. A busy public beach isn’t too far away.

“When I saw that egg, wow,” said Kimberly Kaufman, of the nearby nonprofit Black Swamp Bird Observatory. “It was really one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced in my career as a bird conservationist. Nature always finds a way. These birds just find a way.

“And the least we can do is try to give them the best shot that we can,” Kaufman said.

Nish was identified by a colored star marking given to last year’s chicks to represent the Chicago flag. He and two female plovers from Pennsylvania were spotted at Maumee by late May, but some birders believed he was stopping in Ohio on his way to another locale, perhaps Michigan. The young plover, taking after his parents, decided to go for a first, settling down along the Lake Erie shore at a halfway point between Chicago and Presque Isle, where his mate hatched.

The plovers have nested at an inland lake in the park, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed a protective exclosure around the nest earlier this week.

Kaufman, well-known in the birding world, is coordinating the volunteer monitoring effort.

“It’s really a beautiful, beautiful site,” she said. “And is it ideal for a critically endangered species? No. But that’s the site they’ve chosen.”

The Ohio community plans to embrace the public education opportunity, Kaufman said. Already, beachgoers have wandered up to plover territory to ask about all the people looking through scopes.

“You would know the moment that their eyes locked on the bird,” Kaufman said.

Among Chicago birders and organizers of the recovery effort, there’s pride in seeing the ongoing payoff of helping out Monty and Rose — and an eagerness to share tips on plover survival in urban environments.

“They’re going through, right now, what we went through a few years ago — in terms of the mad excitement, the mad scramble,” said Tamima Itani, a board member of the Illinois Ornithological Society and a recent author of a children’s book about Monty and Rose. “It’s a lot of work but it’s a lot of fun too.”

The news about Nish feels like a family homecoming, Itani said.

“I feel like I’m going to be a great-grandmother soon, hopefully,” she said.

Itani said she remembers when Francie Cuthbert, a leader in the plover recovery effort, said plovers nesting at Montrose means they can nest anywhere.

“It shows what’s possible,” said Cuthbert, a professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. “And if people had not pitched in, it could’ve been just chaos.”

Birds are still arriving and moving around, Cuthbert said, so it’s possible the other two chicks will show up. First-year nesters are also slower to return.

Jillian Farkas, the Great Lakes piping plover recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said she doesn’t want to jinx anything, but there are more nests compared with the same time last year. There are 64 plover pairs so far for the season, and Farkas said 70 seems possible. Lower lake levels are believed to be helping, and shorelines have mostly been spared from major storm events.

“Every plover has a different personality,” Farkas said. “Some dads are more protective. Some kind of slack on the job.”

But Nish’s instincts are looking good.

“We’ll just wait and see with bated breath,” Farkas said.

A plover pair in Ohio bodes well for the historic distribution of the shorebirds, once down to about a dozen nesting pairs.

“Indiana’s next on the list,” Farkas said.

As for Monty and Rose, their third Montrose summer is going smoothly, aside from a May balloon incident that spooked the birds and sent them away from the nest, which now contains four eggs.

“They really view objects like that as threats,” Itani said. “To them, they’re predators.”

Birders are hoping the plovers weren’t off the nest too long and there aren’t any long-term consequences. The Fish and Wildlife Service came in to remove the balloon shortly after it showed up on a surveillance camera looming by the cage and the birds went back to incubating.

And as for the nest, it’s right in the middle of the new habitat addition from the Chicago Park District that birders lobbied for in the lead-up to summer.

“Monty and Rose are the ultimate diplomats, knowing exactly where to nest when they get a new habitat addition,” Itani said.

In just a few weeks, another set of fuzzy chicks may be zooming around Montrose, preparing to carry on their parents’ — and now their brother’s — legacy.