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Bird o' the Day

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Our favorite source of Chicago news, Block Club Chicago, is all over the Piping Plover beat.

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Four Piping Plover Chicks Get Names — And They Honor Chicago Music Legends

The cute, fuzzy chicks’ names were picked via a contest where more than 1,500 ideas were submitted

by Kelly Bauer

One of the four piping plover chicks scurries around Montrose Beach in Uptown on June 25, 2026. Credit:Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

CHICAGO — The four piping plover chicks at Montrose Beach now have names.

The baby birds — offspring of beloved plovers Sea Rocket and Imani — got their names this weekend, the Chicago Piping Plovers group announced on X. They’ll be known as Buddy, Frankie, Mavis and Tweedy.

Each of the names honors a musician with strong ties to Chicago: 

  • Buddy honors George “Buddy” Guy, a famed blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.
  • Frankie is named for Frankie Knuckles, a groundbreaking DJ who was key in the creation of house music.
  • Mavis is named after Mavis Staples, the legendary gospel and R&B singer and civil rights activist.
  • Tweedy is named after Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

The names were picked via a contest where people could nominate names. Each of the names that organizers selected was submitted multiple times, according to the Chicago Piping Plovers group.

In all, the group received 456 submissions with more than 1,500 name ideas, according to Chicago Piping Plovers.

The chicks were born in June. They have been banded to make them identifiable for the future.

Last year, Chicagoans submitted hundreds of suggestions to name Imani and Sea Rocket’s three chicks. The winners: Bean, El and Ferris.

Ferris was killed by a hawk, but the other two survived. In 2024, the two made a nest with four chicks. All their chicks died except one, named Nagamo, despite efforts by local preservationists.

Incubating and raising chicks is “quite demanding” on plovers, and it is important the plovers are given uninterrupted space to eat, care for the nest and look for predators so they can protect themselves and their chicks, the piping plovers group previously posted on X.

Imani is the son of the piping plover couple Monty and Rose, who became Chicago celebrities when they began nesting at Montrose Beach in 2019. Monty died at Montrose Beach from a respiratory infection in 2022, while Rose’s whereabouts are unknown.

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