Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Luis Muñoz, 56, birder and retired police officer.
Montrose is the number one birding location in all of Illinois. That little piece of whatever, 15 to 20 acres, is number one in the whole state. It sticks out into Lake Michigan, so when the birds are migrating at night and the sun rises, first thing they see is Montrose Point, and they make a beeline to it. I’m a hard-core birder, so a lot of birds get me excited. Kirtland’s warbler, that’s a really exciting bird. Piping plover, that’s an endangered species. We like seeing endangered species—it gives us more firepower to go to the parks and say, “This is what we’re seeing; take care of this habitat.”
