Piping plovers are little white and gray shorebirds. You might’ve seen them running around on the beach. Sarah Saunders is a post-doctoral researcher at Michigan State University. “The majority of the piping plovers in the Great Lakes region nest at Sleeping Bear Dunes,” she says. “The chicks look like little fluffy cotton balls on toothpicks because their legs are really long and they’re very cute. And they make a very high pitched piping noise.”