Wings for My Flight: The Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock
Cover of the 1991 edition
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| Author | Marcy Cottrell Houle |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Subject | Peregrine falcons, environmental protection |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Set in | Chimney Rock, Colorado; 1975 |
| Published | 1991 (Addison-Wesley) |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 188 |
| Awards |
Oregon Book Award Christopher Award |
| ISBN | |
| 598.9 | |
Wings for My Flight: The Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock is a 1991 book by American wildlife biologist Marcy Cottrell Houle. Wings for My Flight documents Houle's observations of a pair of the then-endangered peregrine falcons at Chimney Rock, a prominent rock formation in Colorado, while employed by the Colorado Division of Wildlife in the summer of 1975. To protect the falcons, Houle had to halt a million-dollar project to turn ancient Anasazi ruins in the area into a tourist attraction and faced opposition and harassment by the Chimney Rock community as a result. The community eventually showed concern for Houle, however, after her trailer was broken into and vandalized.
By 1975, peregrine falcons had been reduced to 324 pairs in North America, primarily as a result of DDT, a widely used pesticide. DDT lowered estrogen levels in female peregrines and inhibited the production of calcium, causing eggs to thin and break during incubation. Recovery efforts for the peregrine falcon have been remarkably successful: agricultural DDT was banned by the U.S. in 1972 and efforts to breed and train peregrine falcons in captivity to later release to the wild were effective. In 1999, the peregrine falcon was removed from the U.S. Endangered Species list.
Wings for My Flight was originally published in hardcover by Addison-Wesley in 1991. The book was republished in 1999 by Pruett Publishing with a foreword by Robert Michael Pyle and a new preface and epilogue by Houle. The book was updated again in 2014 and republished by the University of New Mexico Press with photographs and a preface by Houle touching upon the recovery of the peregrine falcon. In May 1996, the children's magazine Cricket published a short story written by Houle titled "Albert", adapted from Wings for My Flight. Reception to Wings for My Flight has generally been positive. In 1991, the book co-received the Oregon Book Award, which promotes literature by Oregon-based authors. Wings for My Flight was also awarded a Christopher Award for books in 1992, which recognizes works that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit". The Library Journal described it as "well-crafted and compelling", while the Los Angeles Times referred to it as "heartfelt", although "naive and overdrawn at times".
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