By Tad Vezner
tvezner@pioneerpress.com

Article Last Updated: 07/25/2008 12:34:16 AM CDT

After earning the title of World War II fighter ace, Harrison "Bud" Tordoff always said he knew how peregrine falcons felt. The highly evolved birds of prey dive at upward of 200 mph when they hunt; Tordoff dived from 25,000 feet in a P-51D Mustang to shoot down one of the German military's newly developed fighter jets. 
Perhaps that is why, Tordoff's professional colleagues surmise, he spearheaded the effort to reintroduce peregrines into the Midwestern wild.   
"He was the heart and soul of the whole peregrine restoration effort (in the Midwest). The rest of us were just lackeys," said Pat Redig, founder and former director of the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center.  
Tordoff, of North Oaks, died Wednesday at St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul at 85. 
Starting in the early 1980s, Tordoff — a University of Minnesota ecology professor who also served as director of the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History — worked with Redig to get peregrines flying in the Midwest again. The falcon's population was decimated in the 1950s and '60s by widespread use of the now-banned pesticide DDT. 
Tordoff and Redig's first two attempts to reintroduce captive-bred peregrines "failed utterly," Redig said. Great horned owls "cleaned out" the peregrine chicks before the chicks could fly. 
At $1,500 a bird, "it was a pretty expensive way to feed the owls," Redig said. 
The group had an idea: move the birds to the big city, where they would be protected from predators, have people to watch over them in nesting boxes atop tall buildings and power plant smokestacks, and have a ready food source in the form of pigeons and the nearby Mississippi River.   
The first peregrine was released in Minneapolis. But the bird didn't take to all the glitz and moved across the river to St. Paul, where it perched on what is now the Bremer Building. 
"She loved it; it was a great place to be," Redig said. 
Another St. Paul nesting box was placed on the recently demolished smokestack of the decommissioned High Bridge power plant. 
In 2006, there were 210 pairs of peregrines in the Midwest, with 153 pairs hatching 435 young, according to the Midwest Peregrine Society. After being placed on the endangered species list in 1984, the falcon was removed from the list in 1999. 
Carol Henderson, supervisor of the nongame wildlife program at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, is one Tordoff admirer who has seen firsthand the fruits of his labors. 
Henderson's new book, "Birds in Flight: The Art and Science of How Birds Fly," is dedicated to Tordoff. 
Born and raised in Mechanicville, N.Y., Tordoff always loved animals — particularly birds, which he hunted, his son Jeff Tordoff said. 
"Just the way he grew up. He loved animals more than he loved people. He was never happier than when he was handling (animals)." 
When he attended Cornell University, "he was surprised you could make a profession out of birds, so he did," his son said. 
In 1943, Tordoff joined the Army Air Force. He escorted bombers on the European front and shot down five German planes in aerial combat. 
After returning home, he finished school at Cornell and taught at the universities of Kansas and Michigan before arriving in Minnesota in 1970. He directed the University of Minnesota's Bell Museum from 1970 until 1983 and remained a professor of ecology at the U until 1991, when he retired. 
He worked with peregrines until his death.