Revisiting Chewie the Piping Plover, and Queerness in Nature

While working with Piping Plovers in June of 2022, Andrea Gress and the rest of the plover team, observed a same-sex pairing between two well known plovers. It was a first for the species. But was it really? In today's episode, Andrea shares a brief history of how queerness in nature was viewed by the scientific community, and how these perspectives have evolved. To explore this further, we also re-share an episode originally aired in 2022: Piping Plovers - A Love Story. As promised, here are some additional resources to explore: Watch: Animal Pride: Nature's Coming Our Story , the Nature of Things Listen: A Field Guide to Gay Animals by Canadaland The Seagulls by Radiolab Read: Same-sex partnerships in birds: a review of the current literature and a call for more data by Gillies and Siddiqi-Davies 2025 Same-sex sexual behaviour among mammals is widely observed, yet seldomly reported: Evidence from an online expert survey by Anderson et al 2024 Andrea Gress (she/her) secretly thinks Piping Plovers are better than all the other birds...studied Renewable Resource Management at the University of Saskatchewan. She pivoted towards birds, after an internship in South Africa. Upon returning, she worked with Piping Plovers in Saskatchewan, and then as the Ontario Piping Plover Coordinator. Years of sharing her love of plovers with beach goers has turned into a full time communications role with Birds Canada. Support the show

You can listen to Revisiting Chewie the Piping Plover, and Queerness in Nature online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Revisiting Chewie the Piping Plover, and Queerness in Nature is an episode from The Warblers by Birds Canada by Birds Canada.

This episode is 11:31 long.

This episode was published on Jun 25, 2025.

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