Nova

Born in Spring of 2025, Nova was the only chick of Aurora, one of the most successful breeding peregrines in the Midwest.  Aurora's own story is one of strength and beauty.  Aurora was born in 2008 and successfully raised over 30 peregrine chicks.  

Nova's egg is the only one that hatched out of Aurora's clutch in 2025.  Once Nova could fly, she unfortunately got herself into a few tricky situations and each time she was helped by the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, MO.  On the third visit to WBS, they found she had broken her wing.  She stayed in their wonderful care.  Once she recovered from the wing injury, they worked with her to be released but she wasn't quite getting the hang of it.  

In Sept. 2025, one of our Soarin' Hawk board members was visiting his son in St. Louis and decided to visit WBS.  And that day is the day that we were offered the chance of adopting this beautiful young peregrine.  Both Soarin' Hawk and WBS worked hard with getting all the paperwork completed (the government shutdown caused many delays).  Finally in 

March of 2026, we drove to the WBS and picked up our girl.  She had no name at the time, it was Soarin' Hawk's job to name her.  We wanted to honor Aurora, the strong peregrine who raised so many chicks in the St. Louis area.  Our volunteers came up with many wonderful names.  Then we voted and the name Nova was given to our beautiful peregrine falcon.  

Soarin' Hawk is eternally grateful to the kind folks at World Bird Sanctuary who cared for Nova when she hurt, trained her when it was realized she was not releasable and then gifted her to Soarin' Hawk. 

Watch Nova's story here:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l11wqpzX_HQ