46 TH Ee ASUCD Ui BrOUN oe BU ere 
does produce an aura of nostalgia because of memories associated with our 
now extinct native parrot. 
Literature Cited 
Banks, R. C. 1970. Birds imported into the United States in 1968. Speci. 
Sci Report — Wildlife, No. 136. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 64 pp. 
Bump, G. 1971. The South American Monk, Quaker, or Gray-headed para- 
keet. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Leaflet 496, 4 pp. 
Trimm, W. 1972. The monk parrot. The Conservationist 26: 4-5, N.Y. State 
Dept. Env. Cons. 
Wells, R. W. 1973. Holy parakeets! Nat. Observer 12, No. 1 (week of Jan. 6), 
Dal ands: 
ft ft 
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The Extirpation of the Piping Plover As A 
Breeding Species in Illinois and Indiana 
Charles B: Cory, in “Birds of Il 
linois and Wisconsin,” states that 
the Piping Plover “occurs more or 
less commonly during the migra- 
tions and a few remain as summer 
residents and _ breed.” Several 
breeding records exist for the 
Waukegan dunes (Lake County), 
Wolf Lake (Illinois-Indiana bor- 
der), the Calumet flats on the north 
side of Lake Calumet (Cook), and 
for the Indiana dunes along Lake 
Michigan, the only known Indiana 
breeding station. As late as 1955, 
Smith and Parmalee were calling 
this species an “uncommon but 
fairly regular migrant along the 
shores of Lake Michigan, nesting 
in the Waukegan dunes, Lake 
County.” 
It was about this time that in- 
creasing recreational use of Lake 
County beaches, particularly at II- 
linois Dunes State Park, extirpated 
the last known breeding pairs in 
Illinois. The last recorded breed- 
ing for the Lake Calumet area is 
May 29, 1955, when Charles T. 
Clark found a nest with four eggs 
on the flats. The birds may have 
persisted in the Wolf Lake region 
through the 1950s: there are sev- 
eral summer records of very small 
flocks (1-4 birds) in this region up 
to abcut 1960. No direct evidence of 
breeding however was found dur- 
ing these years. 
The Lake Calumet colony was 
not endemic, but began sometime 
in the 1940s when railroad cinders 
were used for marshland-fill, re- 
sulting in an area very attractive 
to shorebirds. Breeding birds in 
this Lake Calumet-Wolf Lake area 
may have been overflow birds from 
the Indiana Dunes where the 
species was quite successful in the 
first half of this century. The Pip- 
ing Plover bred sporadically at 
least until the early 1960s (personal 
communication with dunes resi- 
dents). 
The present status of the Piping 
Plover has greatly changed from 
1909 when Cory’s work was pub- 
lished. Indeed, the status has 
changed most drastically in the 
past two decades. No longer does 
the species breed in the Indiana 
Dunes (because of heavy recrea- 
tional use); Wolf Lake is no longer 
suitable for anything more than a 
stray migrant; the Lake Calumet 
area is largely destroyed and will 
eventually be entirely industrial- 
ized (gone too are the breeding 
