THE ADIRONDACKS HOME CLIFF HANGERS

Since the publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark Silent Spring, which documented the dangers of pesticides, birds of prey have rebounded across New York. One of those—the peregrine falcon, an iconic hunter and flier—has come back from the brink of extinction, to the point that the raptor now nests on every Hudson River bridge south of Albany. New York City, where the falcons lay their eggs on ledges of tall buildings, is said to have the largest urban population of peregrine falcons in the world.

But those bridges and buildings are stand-ins for the birds’ natural nesting sites. In the Adirondacks, they use cliffs and other rock faces as nature intended. Every spring, they create so-called “scrapes” for their eggs (as opposed to nests made from sticks) by scratching away dirt and rocks on ledges hundreds of feet off the ground.

“They prefer the highest and most sheer of the cliffs,” explained Eric Teed, a naturalist who has advised the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), both formally and informally, on peregrine falcons in the Adirondacks. He has studied the birds for two decades, sometimes spending several hours a day