Return of the Peregrines

Native-born peregrine falcons--not plentiful even when they were thriving --had not been seen in the skies over the Eastern U.S. for some 20 years. But now this fierce, graceful bird of prey, driven to the brink of extinction by DDT,* appears to be making a comeback. Ornithologist Tom Cade and his colleagues at Cornell University have succeeded in breeding peregrines in captivity and releasing them in the wild, where they can once again be seen soaring to great heights before diving on their prey at speeds of up to 200 m.p.h.

The Cornell program to boost the peregrine population got started in 1970. But it was not until 1973 that the ornithologists working at Cornell's "hawk barn" got chicks from captive birds to survive, and not until 1975 that they began regularly releasing peregrines into the wild. Last year Cade placed 16 peregrines--offspring of birds trapped in Canada and Alaska and mated in captivity--in artificial eyries in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. This summer he hopes to set 34 free in the Eastern U.S. His goal: to release enough young birds so that the peregrine can re-establish itself in the East and breed naturally, now that there is a near-total U.S. ban on DDT.

Capturing the wild birds, which tend to nest on cliffs and other towering places, is no easy trick. And breeding the falcons and returning their offspring to nature are even more difficult. So that peregrine chicks will think of their new man-made eyries as natural homes, they must be placed while they are still flightless--and thus most vulnerable to predators. Great horned owls, the peregrine's major natural enemy, killed two of the birds released in New York State last year. One was electrocuted when it lighted on a high-voltage transformer.

Odds should be better for four-month-old birds placed atop a tower in New Jersey's Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge earlier this month. Two amateur falconers, Daniel Hays and Edward Howard, both 24, are living in a tent near the tower and keeping an eye on the nesting box. They will feed the young falcons through a trap door in the box (so the birds will not become accustomed to taking food from humans) until shortly after they make their first kill. Then, to learn more about the falcons' habits after they begin hunting on their own, Hays and Howard will track them by means of tiny radio transmitters attached to the birds' tail feathers.

Promising Prospects. Cade and New Jersey officials who have helped sponsor the peregrine program hope that the birds will adapt quickly to life in the refuge. The prospects seem promising. Two falcons released a few miles to the north near Barnegat Inlet last summer disappeared during the winter but returned to the Jersey shore this summer. Equally encouraging, birds bred in captivity have mated this year and begun raising families of their own.

Most important, the falcons seem determined to survive, even to the extent of taking advantage of the civilization that nearly wiped them out. One of the four birds released last year on Carroll Island in Chesapeake Bay later took up residence on a bridge tower near Annapolis. The other three were spotted on tall buildings and grain elevators in Baltimore. There, like sharpies everywhere, they were preying on pigeons.

* Which affected it more than many other birds because it is near the top of the avian food chain; it eats other birds contaminated with DDT, thus further concentrating the chemical in its tissues.

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