FRENCHBURG, Ky. — Eight baby peregrine falcons from South Dakota are making a cliff in the Daniel Boone National Forest their new home. And researchers will be watching to see if they like it enough to stay and breed.

        In a cooperative effort among the Forestry Department at the University of Kentucky and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, scientists are trying for the first time to settle the birds in the Clifty Wilderness in Menifee County.

        Researchers hauled the birds and huge boxes into place Sunday under a natural stone arch above Dunkan Branch near a spectacular gorge dotted with towering limestone outcroppings. To get to the falcons' home researchers need rope, ladders and rappelling harnesses. The U.S. Forest Service used helicopters to place the nesting boxes underneath the arch.

        “Yes,” Matt Dzialak called down from the cliff arch above. “It's the first time in a few days that they've been able to spread their wings.”

        A UK doctoral candidate and ecologist, Mr. Dzialak is in charge of the cliff project and hopes the falcons will make the national forest their permanent home.

        “If we can keep them from going 500 kilometers and just have them stay in the state, that would be great,” he said.

        Similar programs in North Carolina have been successful, resulting in nine to 11 breeding pairs. Success does not come cheap or easily, though. Mr. Dzialak is now camping out on the cliff overlooking the falcons, making sure nothing is amiss.

        Pesticides and poor stewardship left peregrines nearly extinct by the mid-1970s, but in early 1999, they had made a comeback and were removed from the endangered species lists. That same year, biologists set up peregrine nesting boxes on Lexington's Vine Center Tower downtown.

        Peregrines are wanderers and “generalist predators,” meaning that they go for the easiest avian prey. The falcons are attracted to pigeon- and starling-infested urban areas, but urban areas can attract Great Horned Owls, which prey on falcons.

        The young falcons made their trek over land in crates from a private breeding operation from South Dakota to Lexington because it was too hot to fly them by airplane on Saturday.

        After a night's sleep in a lab at the University of Kentucky, the falcons were banded and outfitted with dummy transmitters to get them accustomed to the feeling so they won't rip off real ones.

        For at least a week, the falcons will be confined to the large boxes lined with nesting material pea gravel. Every day, Mr. Dzialak or one of his assistants will drop partially plucked quail (two apiece) through long feeding tubes. The goal is for the birds have as little human contact as possible. When the falcons are ready to fly, the nesting box doors will be opened and they will choose their paths. The Kentucky project began a year and a half ago, when Mr. Dzialak and colleagues began the search for an appropriate cliff.

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