Photos by Ryan Taylor
Tom Marks watched Sunday as Merrill Frydendall examined a tent caterpillar found nesting in a plum tree. After 27 years of monitoring bird boxes at Minneopa State Park, Frydendall has gained a deep knowledge of the prairie ecosystem.
MANKATO — For 27 years Merrill Frydendall has tended 50 bird boxes on the Minneopa prairie, recording their inhabitants' comings and goings and, at the same time, gaining an intimate knowledge of the oak savanna.
As he led a small group down his Bluebird Trail at the state park Sunday, Frydendall paused where the rough face of a boulder protruded from the grass. It was a conglomerate, he explained, formed when small pebbles fused with limestone millions of years ago, at a time when Minnesota was a seabed covered in salt water.
The boulder would have been inconspicuous to almost anyone else, covered as it was by grass and trees. But Frydendall, who has passed over it hundreds of times, showed the group the small exposed surface was part of a huge, invisible mass forming a low ridge in the prairie.
Still, Frydendall's expertise is in ornithology, not geology. And as sharp as his eyes were, his ears registered each chirp and twitter.
Frydendall heard a whistle from a nearby tree and cocked his head. "That's a cardinal, there," he said authoritatively.
Frydendall was doing his weekly check of the bird boxes. They were made for eastern bluebirds, but are also homes to house wrens, black-capped chickadees and a number of other prairie birds. These species are just now nesting and laying eggs.
"Prairie species are a little later than forest species" in their spring migration, Frydendall explained.
He was looking for recent hatchlings Sunday, so he could band their legs before they leave the nest. The retired Minnesota State University biology professor is a licensed federal bander and sends the information to a national database.
At the first box he checked, Frydendall approached slowly, gingerly opening a side panel to peer in at some baby blackcapped chickadees he had banded previously. They were almost big enough to fly, so he let them be.
Merrill Frydendall, a retired Minnesota State University biology professor, found a pair of eastern bluebird eggs in one of the 50 bird boxes he monitors weekly on the Minneopa prairie. Checking all the boxes makes for a six-hour hike.
"Their wings are just the size where I wouldn't want to open it up," he said. From somewhere above ame the raspy "chickadee-deedee" of an angry parent.
In the next box, a house wren had laid five tiny, chestnut brown eggs.
"Most of your songbirds lay one egg a day, usually in the morning," he explained.
When they are all laid, the mother will incubate them for about two weeks before they hatch. In another two weeks the birds will be ready to fly, so Frydendall tries to band them when they are between eight and 12 days old.
The birds Frydendall bands are hardly ever found by another scientist and reported.
"There is a very, very low return rate," Frydendall said. "As an individual, I won't learn a whole lot from banding." But together with other banders, he gathers information that illuminates general changes in bird populations and migration patterns.
Only about a week old, an eastern bluebird hatchling has a wispy coat of natal down on its head and is just sprouting feathers from its wings. This bluebird is growing up in a bird box at Minneopa State Park built nearly 30 years ago to help the bird's population recover from a 20th century decline.
Finally, at a box occupied by eastern bluebirds, Frydendall found what he was looking for. He reached in and pulled out a naked chick, and then another and another, until four people cradled the small, quivering birds in their hands.
"They're just getting their eyes open," he observed.
With a small pliers, Frydendall quickly and efficiently squeezed a metal band around a twig-thin leg and plopped the bird back into the nest. When all the birds were safely returned, Frydendall began to lead the group down the trail again. Chatting about the transition of the prairie from spring to summer, he suddenly stopped.
"Rose-breasted grosbeak," he pronounced, and then continued talking.
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