Peregrine Project at Rock City

On Tuesday a young male Peregrine Falcon, a threatened species, arrived in Chattanooga from Minnesota.

The young bird, dubbed "Rocky," has been placed in the "hacking cage" at Rock City. Hacking is the process of releasing young raptors to the wild. It has been shown that when they become mature, they will often return to the area where they learned to fly, to nest and raise young.

Rocky is 31 days old and will remain in the cage for two or three weeks. He'll then be fitted with a transmittor and leg bands and released into the wild about August 15th.

Avid peregrine enthusiast Harold Sharp says this is the third hacking effort on Lookout Mountain sinc3e 1993. At least one of those birds known as "Roi," returned to nest near the Chickamauga Dam for nearly 12 consecutive years before he died last year.