Monty and Rose memorial brings story full circle

Beach naming recognizes beloved Piping Plovers.

Monty with three chicks in 2019. Photo by Gordon Garcia.

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the news that the Chicago Park District has voted to name a section of the Montrose Beach Dunes Natural Area after Monty and Rose, a beloved pair of Piping Plovers whose unlikely love story captured the hearts of Chicagoans.

If you’re new to this story, let me quickly bring you up to speed. Piping Plovers in the Great Lakes are federally endangered—last year there were only 80 pairs nesting on the lakes. The vast majority of Piping Plovers nest on the Atlantic Coast and in the Missouri River Valley. They were very, very rare in Chicago until 2019 when Monty and Rose arrived (both birds sadly have since passed) and nested. Monty and Rose were named after “Montrose” get it?

The news about the habitat naming had me thinking back to events that happened nearly five years ago. I remember being on the beach, watching over the birds with others. I was still absorbing the idea that plovers might nest in Chicago, when I saw an email from a concert promotion company, announcing a massive two-day music festival—with the Chicago Park District’s approval—set for the same beach. Improbably, the email arrived the same week that Chicago newcomers Monty and Rose had lost their first nest in a gale that blew in off Lake Michigan. 

How or if the concert could take place with the birds present—federally endangered and entitled to their habitat—seemed a puzzle to me. The odds were, I thought, that the business interests likely would supersede these two tiny birds that had suddenly decided that the locale would be a good place for a nest. 

In the first news reports about the concert, we were described as a group of “activists” defending the birds. For some reason, the phrasing made me laugh—I had a vision of protesters throwing paint on fur coats—but it is hard for me to argue with the characterization looking back now. 

The Chicago Sun-Times first covered the Piping Plovers with this story on June 14, 2019. Here “conservationists” were described as those concerned about the music festival.

The summer went on, the Piping Plovers fledged two chicks from the beach, and the music festival, Mamby on the Beach, ultimately was cancelled. Still, emotions among birders were raw when I and a few others showed up at the December 2019 meeting of the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners to jump in on the meeting’s monthly “People in the Parks” comment period. Monty and Rose weren’t yet household names, and there was a legitimate concern about placing large commercial events on the beach. 

From left, Judy Pollock, Chris Monaghan, and Melissa Foster (in plover mask) are pictured with me at the Park District meeting.

The District Board is made up of mayoral appointees, titans of industry, movers and shakers and the like. I doubt they would know a plover from a robin. None of the five members looked up from their notes as I approached the lectern, nor as I started talking about the birds, highlighting the importance of Montrose Beach as a natural area. I imagine I was just another of the parade of activists who show up at meetings to complain about any number of issues. 

The pandemic soon hit, and the plovers came back and had great success in 2020 and again in 2021. They were getting more and more recognition and becoming media darlings. The Park District seemed to embrace them, too, and began to understand the value of the positive press about their natural areas. On-the-ground relationships coalesced among the plovers’ protectors, parks personnel, and elected officials. 

The Park Board Members who were there in 2019 are long since gone, swept away by scandals and the political winds of the day. Having the plovers recognized at a Board meeting—which is what happened with the habitat naming—is a 180 from where we were in 2019.

“From one bird love story to another, diverse bird species are reclaiming once industrialized areas of our beloved city, including the steel mills and landfills in Chicago’s Southeast Side and the once contaminated riverways, and calling our urban parks home,” Park District Superintendent and CEO Rosa Escareño said glowingly in a news release last month.

But, as always, the Piping Plovers’ resilience—with a lift from the continued presence of chick Imani in 2022 and 2023—has won the day. That’s what makes the news of the Monty and Rose memorial so sweet.   

Where to watch my films

If you are still getting into this newsletter and wondering what I do, I suggest watching one of my documentaries about the aforementioned Monty and Rose. The easiest thing to do is to watch “Monty and Rose 2: The World of Monty and Rose,” a 50-minute film that chronicles much of their story through 2021. It is available to watch online via Vimeo for a small rental or purchase fee.

If a DVD of the film is of interest, I’ve just dropped prices as we’re a couple years out from the film and my basement storage of DVDs has its limits. You can purchase a “Monty and Rose 2” DVD for only $5 + shipping.

An early spring

As one thinks about the arrival dates of spring migrants, it’s impossible to avoid noting the impact of climate patterns. This spring is especially early in an era of earlier and earlier springs. It’s enough to cause climate change anxiety and trauma.

Considering how mild it’s been, it’s amazing we are just two weeks ahead of schedule with short-distance migrants like Red-winged Blackbirds and American Woodcocks. The rest of migration this year will be, uh, interesting. Will there be enough cold fronts to keep birds south? Will we see an early hatch of insects that lures birds north? Only time—or at least the next couple months—will tell.

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