MANKATO — Click here for slideshow of peregrine falcons.





It’s official.

Larry, Coop and Merrill, A18, A19, and A20 respectively, are now registered with both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Midwest Peregrine Project as residents of the North Star Bridge.

Ignoring the screams of the adult birds, a Peregrine Project banding crew climbed a 40-foot-long extension ladder Monday morning steadied by state highway workers, and retrieved the three peregrines, all screaming equally as loud, to extract blood samples and to attach leg bands.

It was determined the chicks, all males, were about 18 days old.

It was the second trip the crew had made to Mankato. They had planned to band the chicks two weeks ago, only to discover they were still too young to safely be banded.

Luis Cruz, a veterinarian from Costa Rica temporarily working with the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center, climbed up the quivering aluminum ladder and after scrambling over a bridge support, handed the screeching chicks one by one to Karla Anderson of the Minnesota Zoo, who had followed him with a backpack equipped with separate compartments for each chick.

Back on the ground, blood samples were extracted. Then Jacquelyn Fallon of the Peregrine Project attached a pair of leg bands to the birds, one for the USFW and one for the Project, each bearing unique numbers for future identification.

In keeping with tradition, local individuals involved with the peregrine banding selected names for the birds.

Larry, bearing the Project band number A18, was named after Larry Filter, a longtime engineer with the Minnesota Department of Transportation who died two years ago.

Coop, bearing the band number A19, was named after MnDOT bridge supervisor Larry Cooper.

Merrill, bearing band number A20, was named after retired Minnesota State University ornithology professor Merrill Frydendall. It was Frydendall who first noticed the adult peregrine falcons four years ago near the bridge and contacted the Project.

Peregrine falcons, acknowledged by bird experts as the skyrockets of the raptor family, are able to make spectacular dives at speeds up to 200 mph as they pluck their prey — other birds — from the sky.

The species have never been very numerous. In the best of times before the advent of DDT, which caused their reproductive success rate to plummet, only 30-40 pairs of peregrines were ever thought to inhabit the Midwest, said Bud Tordoff, a retired University of Minnesota professor who founded the Peregrine Project in 1980 to restore the bird’s numbers.

Now, thanks to the discontinued use of the pesticide and restoration efforts and the birds’ willingness to use man-made nesting sites such as smokestacks, bridges and high-rise buildings, there are more than 200 known peregrine nesting sites in the Midwest, including 40 in Minnesota.

After banding, the three peregrine chicks were returned to their nest tucked beneath the bridge none-the-worse for the wear. Fallon estimated they should be able to fly in about three weeks.

Assuming they survive their first flights from the nest — chick survival tends to be lower at bridges because of their obvious proximity to water — area residents then should be able to observe the fledged young falcons follow their parents as they hunt for prey near the bridge.