PELLSTON, Mich. — Holding a shotgun microphone and wearing headphones, Ricardo Lyra stood on the shoreline of Douglas Lake as a seaplane roared to life on a quiet summer morning.
Lyra, the 2025 Artist in Residence at the University of Michigan Biological Station, recorded sounds of the plane taxiing on the water away from the research and teaching campus and taking off on Tuesday, July 15.
The professional musician from Brazil will use the audio as part of a song he is creating about Great Lakes Piping Plovers.
“Since the moment I arrived here in June, I started hearing about the piping plovers and the herculean efforts put into their conservation,” Lyra said. “I've developed great admiration and an emotional connection to these birds — they're adorable.”
Lyra, a guitarist who also is a bioacoustics researcher, is drawing inspiration from nature and research to record an album during his artist residency, including the plovers and the work of a legendary woman in science who was on the plane on Tuesday.
Legendary Researcher
Dr. Francie Cuthbert from the University of Minnesota is stationed at the U-M Biological Station each year during the spring and summer.
She is the waterbird researcher who started the intensive plover recovery, captive rearing and re-release program more than 30 years ago at the field research station in Pellston.
It has evolved into a massive team effort — full of state, federal and provincial government agencies, the Detroit Zoo, and volunteers at beaches in the U.S. and Canada throughout the Great Lakes region and down the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and the Gulf states.
Tuned together, they form an orchestrated force of human nature and ingenuity to save plover chicks and ultimately the entire population of iconic shorebirds from the brink of extinction.
Cuthbert took the seaplane flight this week to assess populations at common tern and Caspian tern sites in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She also planned to photograph beach sites used by nesting piping plovers.
The plover conservation team travels to several states in the Great Lakes region in June and July to monitor wild nests, band chicks and adults, and rescue abandoned eggs. They also transport month-old chicks back to Great Lakes beaches to set them free in the wild.
Members of Cuthbert’s team and her own voice will be featured in Lyra’s new plover song.
“Ricardo is an amazing, creative, talented person, and I feel very honored that he found the plover story interesting,” Cuthbert said. “I can hardly wait to hear the finished product.”
Saving a Species
UMBS is home to the captive rearing center for piping plovers.
Every spring and summer, the facility is staffed by avian specialists from zoos across the country stationed at UMBS to incubate and hatch out abandoned Great Lakes piping plover eggs and care for chicks until they’re ready to be released into the wild. That’s usually about 30 days when a plover reaches a weight of around 40 grams.
The shores of the Great Lakes were once home to nearly 800 pairs of piping plovers. In 1990 that number had dropped to between 12 and 17.
While nesting birds continue to face challenges from people and predators, the conservation work is showing success.
Adult plovers are reproducing, and 25-30% of the captive-reared chicks return to the Great Lakes to mate after their winter in the south — that’s a rate that Cuthbert said is very close to the return rate of the wild birds.
This year, the researchers said they hit a record of 88 nesting pairs during the 2025 breeding season.
On July 12, the organizers of the Great Lakes Piping Plover recovery effort shared an update: “So far, 16 fledgling captive-reared piping plovers from 5 clutches were released at various sites in the Lower and Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The 5 clutches were rescued from several different sites in Michigan, including: Fisherman's Island, Tawas Point State Park and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.”
Making Music
In his song, Lyra is using sounds — like birds chirping, a plane engine and walkie-talkies — to capture the world of the plovers and the people at UMBS who care for them and track their travels.
Before the birds are released back to their natural habitat, each chick’s legs are outfitted with a unique combination of color bands so they can be tracked.
Lyra spent time recording sounds with the University of Minnesota team as they did the banding, a process that is conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Lyra’s idea is to create a song that translates the whole fieldwork banding operation, including the capture, measurement and release of the chicks.
“One of the things I enjoyed the most was putting together a piping plover solo,” Lyra said. “To do that, I've chopped their ‘peep’ sounds, which corresponded to the musical note Mi (E). With that in mind, I've organized the ‘peeps’ in a rhythmic pattern and started to change the pitches of the notes so they fit the key of the song for that part, which is Si minor (Bm).”
Lyra clipped people, plover and equipment sounds and used them as short samples. He tried emulating scratching techniques at some parts to bring a rhythmic feeling to these samples.
“I have been working on this song for nearly a week now and it has been a challenging and exciting process,” Lyra said. “I'm almost done with organizing the arrangement.”
“Not everyone connects with natural history and birds, but many people relate to music and the talent it takes to produce good music and songs,” Cuthbert said. “This is one more way to get people engaged in plover conservation. I’m very excited to hear Ricardo’s finished work.”
During his UMBS artist residency, which will have spanned nearly two months when it ends Aug. 2, Lyra has already created several songs for his new nature-inspired album including “An ode to the lake.”
The song was formed in June during the first of his Sunday workshops with members of the UMBS community. It features a UMBS student reading a self-penned poem, the call of a loon, and musical instruments played by students and researchers. The song includes guitars, jaw harp, saxophone, soprano trombone, trumpet, keyboard and bass. Listen to the song and read the poem in this UMBS news story.
Learn more about the 2025 UMBS Artist in Residence: https://myumi.ch/bVD7X.
Learn more about the inspiring, decades-long team effort to save piping plovers: https://myumi.ch/M6pV3.
The U-M Biological Station — the largest of U-M's campuses — is one of the nation's largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.
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The University of Michigan Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action. We leverage over a century of research and transformative experiences to drive discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond.
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