TWICE SINCE mid-June, Bill Hebb has gotten bad news on an effort to re-establish peregrine falcons at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and the mountains of the Mid-Atlantic.

"We released seven young falcons this summer, and put transmitters on three of the four females," said the natural resource manager at the park. "The first of the three went down soon after the release, somewhere near the park."

Bad news came again in late August, when word came that a second bird had been lost , somewhere on the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsula.

"It's sad to hear we've lost a bird, but the reality is that these young raptors have something approaching a 50 percent mortality rate in their first year," said Hebb. "The hope is that the ones that make it will bring this species back, both here in the park and throughout this region."

I first wrote about the Falcon-Trak program last year, following the effort at Shenandoah National Park, where two sets of young falcons were released.

With assistance from federal and state agencies, several of the birds were outfitted there at Harpers Ferry last spring with tiny solar transmitters so scientists could learn about the habits and migratory patterns of young birds.

Several weeks back, I visited Harpers Ferry to see how this second year of the raptor release has gone.

The hope, both at the Harpers Ferry and Shenandoah National Parks, is that in a few years, some of these birds might return to the area where they were released, to nest and have young.

The peregrine, a raptor that soars through the air and dives at speeds approaching 200 miles an hour, once was numerous in both parks and in mountainous parts of our region.

They began to decline in the 1950s and '60s. The use of DDT was blamed for the decline. The pesticide accumulated in the tissues of birds of prey and caused thinning of eggshells so that the eggs often broke during incubation.

Approached by those involved in the Falcon-Trak project about becoming a part of the effort to bring back the birds, Harpers Ferry gladly joined.