Fidget's Folly

Fidget and her brother Echo are two young peregrine falcons embarking upon their first adventures of freedom. Both falcons were hatched in an incubator by humans and then placed in a box nestled on a cliff. Fidget's Freedom, the first in this two-book story, describes their lives up to Fidget's first flight. Fidget's Folly takes up the story as the two youngsters learn to hunt and fend for themselves. New adventures await them as they grow into wild, independent masters of the sky.This fictional but biologically accurate story is based on the experiences and observations of scientists who successfully reintroduced peregrine falcons into the wild in North America. The peregrine's population had dwindled by the 1960s because of the use of the pesticide DDT, which causes egg shells to be thin and then break during incubation. Two subspecies of peregrine falcons were placed on the federal list of endangered species in 1970, and DDT was banned in 1972. Because of extensive reintroduction efforts with chicks like Fidget and her brother, peregrine falcons were delisted in the 1990s.Fidget's Folly is published in cooperation with the Raptor Education Foundation, whose mission is to advance environmental literacy through educational programs, books, and research services.

Stacey Patterson received a BA in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is now the Supervisor of Imaging at the Margie Petersen Breast Center at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica. Stacey is a falconer and helps out with educational presentations at South Bay Wildlife Rehab in the Los Angeles area. She shares her life with her husband Mark, her peregrine Larissa, and other members of her extended family and furred and feathered menagerie.