Plovers All Over: The winter life of Great Lakes piping plovers

The life of a Great Lakes piping plover is fraught with uncertainty and danger. As a federally endangered species, piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) have a host of wildlife agencies and volunteers from multiple conservation groups looking out for them. During the spring and summer months the plovers are closely monitored and pairs have an enclosure placed over their nest to protect the birds and their eggs from predators. Monitors educate beach users about the plovers and the importance of habitat protection. If an adult is killed by a predator, captive-rearing programs have successfully raised young plovers for release back into the wild.

Following the nesting season, as these small, sand-colored birds start their journey south, their Illinois fans nervously await their return the following spring. Not all the birds will make it back. Throughout the year the birds may encounter hurricanes, wildlife diseases, oil spills or other pollutants, fishing line, predators, the effects of climate change, or something as peculiar as entanglement in hair. Hurricanes are one of the major causes of mortality.

Fortunately, there are dedicated birders watching for the plovers throughout their migratory routes and at their wintering sites. Sightings of the plovers as they travel, and especially once they reach their winter homes, are happily shared between the observers and via social media and personal phone calls.

Where in the world is Pepper, Nagamo or Sage?

The plovers molt into their winter plumage in the fall, a less dramatic look—one without the black collar and forehead band and sporting a darker bill (bye-bye to the orange) and legs that are not as brightly colored. This very demure coloring doesn’t throw off the observers; they are looking for the leg bands that nearly every one of the Great Lakes piping plovers wears.

According to the Great Lakes Piping Plover website, each one of the monitored Great Lakes piping plovers is marked with an aluminum U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) leg band with a unique 9-digit number that identifies them. Biologists also use color bands in varying patterns to allow bird watchers to be able to recognize the plovers from a distance. Colors can range from black and pink, to red, black, purple and green. Each combination is carefully recorded to match the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) number. The Great Lakes plovers are also banded with a unique flag to help discern them from other plover populations to make monitoring easier.

Plover chicks get banded when they are between five and 16 days old. Each chick in a brood gets the same pattern of band colors because they are not large enough to hold a full complement of adult band combinations. On one leg they get a colored band on which a single dot is painted (green, red, blue or yellow) and on the other they receive a USGS metal band. If the chicks survive their first winter and return to nest, the birds are captured and the band with a dot is replaced by the adult banding combination of an orange flag and new pattern of color bands unique to that individual. They keep their original USGS band. They are usually only handled twice in their lifetime, to reduce stressing the birds.

Captive-reared chicks are banded with the full complement of adult bands prior to their release because they are large enough to hold the additional weight, typically at about 30 days old.

You might wonder with all that colorful hardware on their legs, do the bands impact the birds’ survival? Given that these are an endangered species, biologists are interested in that question as well. Fortunately, results from a research study of banded Great Lakes plovers from 2000 to 2008 indicate that the banding has no detrimental effect on survival of the chicks prior to fledging.

If they survive through their first migration, piping plovers typically live five or six years. However, some birds such as Gabby, for example, is not your typical piping plover. She is an overachiever and currently holds the record for world’s oldest known female piping plover—tied with two males that also each lived to be 15 years old. She is the oldest known living Great Lakes piping plover, and has made the migration from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan to Cumberland Island, Georgia and back many times now.

Family Trees

From a population that dipped to only about a dozen pairs, they have rebounded to just over 80 pairs scattered throughout the Great Lakes states. Indeed, every piping plover is vital to the survival of that population. Which is why some of them have become celebrities and history makers in Illinois. Like Monty and Rose, the first piping plovers to fledge chicks in Chicago since 1948. They hailed from two locations in Michigan and found each other in 2018 at Waukegan Beach in Illinois. While that nesting attempt ended with their eggs being collected to be captive-raised and released in Michigan, they successfully nested at Montrose Beach in Chicago 2019, 2020 and 2021.

A male chick, Nish, from Monty and Rose’s 2020 brood, met Nellie (from Pennsylvania) at Maumee Bay State Park in Ohio in 2021, becoming the first piping plovers to successfully nest in Ohio in 83 years. Their chicks were named Erie, Ottawa, Maumee and Kickapoo.

In 2023, seven captive-reared juveniles also made history when they were released in Illinois. Sea Rocket, Prickly Pear and Wild Indigo were released at Montrose Beach. That same day, Pepper, Blaze, Marram and Sunny were released at Illinois Beach State Park north of Waukegan. It was the first time that captive-reared piping plover chicks had ever been released outside of Michigan.

Sea Rocket, survived her first winter and when she returned to Illinois she paired with a male from Monty and Rose’s 2021 brood, Imani. In 2024, their first nest together successfully fledged Nagamo.

Pepper, Sea Rocket’s sibling, and Blaze also survived their first winter and both returned to Waukegan in 2024. The two became a pair and successfully nested. Pepper and Blaze’s chicks Sage, Juniper and Willow left Illinois in August.

On the Lookout for Piping Plovers

The USFWS monitors three uniquely separate populations of piping plover in the United States and Canada: The Northern Great Plains, the Great Lakes, and the Atlantic coast populations. There are far fewer Great Lakes birds, so that population is recognized as federally endangered. There are more birds in the other two populations and therefore they have been designated as federally threatened.

Plovers from the three populations do not randomly disperse among all wintering areas. Monitoring data suggests that the majority of birds winter on the coasts of the southern Atlantic Ocean (individuals from the Atlantic population simply moving further south along the coast) and the Gulf of Mexico (mainly the Great Plains population), as well as in the Caribbean and Mexico (mainly the Atlantic population, but also a few individuals from the Great Lakes population). The Great Lakes population tends to overwinter on the Georgia, South Carolina North Carolina and Florida coasts. Tybee Island, Georgia; Harbor Island, South Carolina; South Topsail Island, North Carolina; and Little Egg Island Bar, Georgia are some of the most frequently used winter locations of Great Lakes piping plovers.

Once they reach their wintering grounds, the plovers tend not to wander too far. Telemetry studies document frequent local movements of up to about 6 miles (e.g., from bay to gulf beaches in Texas) and from ocean to bay or sound beaches (Drake et al. (2001) and Cohen et al. (2008)). Visual observations of banded plovers suggest that there is high fidelity to wintering sites, with little movement of the birds from one wintering region to another. The plovers tend to return to the same beaches for as long as they survive.

Winter Homes of the Illinois Piping Plovers

The female piping plovers leave when the chicks are only 10 days old, typically starting their migration from Illinois in July. The males remain with the chicks until they are able to fly, at about 21 days of age. The males then leave on their journey south while the chicks continue to mature and strengthen their flight muscles. The chicks head south to their wintering grounds about 10 days after the male has left them.

“The incredible value of having piping plover monitors during both the nesting season and at wintering sites has been clearly demonstrated.  Their observations have enabled us to fill in knowledge gaps encompassing a wide range of unknowns, including captive-rearing survival and migration, return rates, mortality events, and the importance of protecting undeveloped shoreline, to name a few.” Brad Semel, Illinois Department of Resources Regional Recovery Specialist

Pepper (Band H5)

Last year Pepper headed to Bunche Beach in Fort Meyers, Florida to spend his first winter after leaving Waukegan. Monitors in Florida realized that he had hair wrapped around his left foot. Audrey Albrecht, shorebird biologist with the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation, was able to catch Pepper and remove the hair that was cutting off the circulation to his foot. She noted that they see hair on all the smaller shorebirds, including knots, sanderlings, and turnstones.

“Getting the news that he successfully made it back to his breeding grounds and fledged chicks was honestly one of the greatest moments of my career,” said Albrecht.

She confirmed that Pepper returned to Bunche Beach again this year and that he and other Great Lakes and Atlantic piping plovers there survived both Hurricane Helene (September) and Hurricane Milton (October).

Albrecht pointed out that Pepper and the other piping plovers are usually sighted foraging alone or in small flocks. She said, “They have very strong site fidelity and can very predictably be found in the same locations on the flats. At a very high tide they are huddled in small groups on “Plover Island,” which is what staff at the park call the area where the Wilson’s and snowy plovers nest in the summer. In the winter, groups of black-bellied plover, Wilson’s plover, snowy plover, semipalmated plover, and piping plover all rest together in the dry sand at high tide.”

Given the strong connections developed between winter observers and the Sharing Our Shore monitors in Waukegan, Carolyn Lueck recently travelled south to Florida to see Pepper in his winter home. On the first day of her December 2024 visit, she saw him foraging in the vast mud flats among large numbers of other shorebirds. The recent hurricanes had devastated many of the sandy beaches along the Gulf Coast, concentrating shorebirds on the remaining mudflats that had not been eroded into the ocean. She shared her sightings with the other Sharing Our Shore monitors, giving them hope that he will return to Waukegan to nest this spring. Until then, the Illinois and Florida monitors are in communication and sightings of Pepper are posted on the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation Facebook page (posted November 4th).

Blaze (Band 4)

Last year Blaze chose to winter in North Carolina, spotted at Masonboro Inlet. Audubon North Carolina reported (posted September 26) that she had returned for the 2024 winter season. Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist with North Carolina Audubon, confirmed that there haven’t been any recent sightings of Blaze (she doesn’t roost on their survey route), but she expects Blaze will be spotted again soon at her favorite spots around Masonboro Inlet.

Juniper, Sage and Willow

Pepper and Blaze’s 2024 chicks left Waukegan towards the end of August. Sage was spotted by a Delta Audubon volunteer in Cameron Parish, Louisiana in September (posted September 8). Less is known about Juniper and Willow. Did they end up in Florida or North Carolina like their parents? Maybe they followed Sage to Louisiana? Or did they each choose a spot along other southern shores?

Fun fact: The three plovers released at Montrose and the four released at Waukegan were all named after local native plants. That naming tradition has continued on with the next generation.

Marram and Sunny

These two plovers were released in Waukegan in 2023 along with Pepper and Blaze. Sadly, Marram perished during a lake storm in 2023. It was only because of daily monitoring by the volunteers that confirmation of her death and the cause could be documented. Sunny has not been seen since leaving Waukegan in August 2023.

Sea Rocket, Wild Indigo and Prickly Pear

Sea Rocket started her fall migration in 2023 with fishing line tangled around her leg. Happily, she was able to somehow remove the line, and she returned to Montrose Dunes to successfully nest in 2024. Sea Rocket has not been seen since she left for her 2024 wintering grounds, the location of which remains a mystery. Will this little survivor make her way back to Chicago?

There have been no reports of Prickly Pear, but Wild Indigo settled in Port Aransas, Texas during his first winter, observed there in May 2024. This is near where Monty used to winter.

Imani

After successfully raising Nagamo this summer with Sea Rocket, volunteer observers reported that Imani left Montrose Beach on August 2. It is not known where he overwinters. Last year he returned to Montrose on April 25. He has successfully returned to Illinois three times, and many fingers are crossed that he makes a fourth successful migration.

Nagamo

Hatched in 2024, Nagamo left for winter grounds this fall and was last seen on September 1 at 63rd Street Beach in Chicago. It is not known where he chose to overwinter.

Getting the Bands Back Together

Why don’t we know where all the Illinois piping plovers go during the fall and winter? Despite the growing number of avid volunteers, not all states and locations have dedicated observers available. Additionally, some of the wintering sites are so remote that it is hard to check them regularly, if at all. And even if a bird is spotted, weather conditions don’t always cooperate to get a clear view or photograph of leg bands. And as Imani, Nagamo and Wild Indigo prove, piping plovers go where they want to… and that doesn’t always include locations with plover “paparazzi.”

The great hope of biologists and hundreds of volunteers in the north and south is that these bands, and those of the other Great Lakes piping plovers, will survive their long trek north and return to the beaches of Illinois to successfully raise more broods of adorable puffballs. Until then, birders in the southern portion of the plover’s range will keep their binoculars handy.

Plovers All Over Social Media

Wondering where you can keep up with the latest plover news? Check out these pages for updates about the welfare of the Illinois piping plovers: Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort, Chicago Piping Plovers and Lake County Audubon.

---

The author would like to thank Brad Semel, Illinois Department of Resources Regional Recovery Specialist, Carolyn Lueck, Lake County Audubon volunteer, Audrey Albrecht, Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation Shorebird Biologist, and Lindsay Addison, North Carolina Audubon Coastal Biologist, for their insights and revisions which much improved this story.

Laura Kammin is a Natural Resources Specialist with the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center. She formerly held positions at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, University of Illinois Extension, Prairie Rivers Network and the Illinois Natural History Survey. She received her master’s degree in wildlife ecology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.