Volunteers with the Chicago Piping Plovers, a group that helps monitor and track the endangered seabirds, first spotted that one of the eggs hatched early Friday morning. By 6 a.m., the second egg had hatched, and a third chick hatched mid-morning. Plovers typically lay four eggs at a time, but the fourth was determined not to be viable Saturday.<\/p>\n
Despite an extreme heat advisory over the weekend, Tamima Itani, lead volunteer coordinator for Chicago Piping Plovers, said the three chicks and their parents were faring well.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we were able to spot the chicks on Saturday, I also noticed that they were keeping in the shade of vegetation,\u201d Itani said. \u201cThese 1-day-old chicks were very smart about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Imani and Searocket\u2019s chicks aren\u2019t the only new addition to Illinois\u2019 plover population. Waukegan is home to the state\u2019s only other known plover couple, Blaze and Pepper<\/a>. On June 16, they hatched three new chicks of their own.<\/p>\n \u201cOur three hatchlings look really good, and they\u2019re surviving this heat and crazy wind,\u201d said Carolyn Lueck, president of the Lake County Audubon Society. \u201cOver the past week, we\u2019ve seen them trying to flex their little \u2018wing stubs.\u2019 You can see the wings starting to take shape.\u201d<\/p>\n Piping plovers, a species of seabird that was once abundant on the Great Lakes shores and North Atlantic coast, were decimated by habitat loss throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, leaving only about a dozen breeding pairs by the 1980s.<\/p>\n Since then, that number has increased to 82 breeding pairs across the Great Lakes, thanks to efforts to reintroduce captive piping plovers into the wild and conserve the plovers\u2019 natural habitat.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very encouraging to see that the last few years have had incremental increases in breeding pairs around the Great Lakes,\u201d said Brad Semel, an endangered species recovery specialist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. \u201cTypically the survivorship of a nest is so low, so the significance of an adult pair in breeding condition is really incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n Imani has returned to nest at Montrose Beach each year since 2021, when he was born to plover parents Monty and Rose<\/a>. The iconic pair were the first piping plovers to live in Chicago in over 70 years, creating a loyal following and raising awareness about the endangered species. They died in 2022.<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/ctc-l-plover-chicks-hatched015_230662572.jpg\")
Two piping plover chicks come out of the vegetation at Montrose Beach on June 22, 2025. (Audrey Richardson\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n\n