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The Adventures of Falcons Frodo and Frieda — Patty Beecham
 
 The Adventures of FalconsFrodo and Frieda
 
By Patty Beecham
 
The Adventures of Falcons Frodo and Frieda — Patty Beecham
 About the size of a magpie. As fast as a Ferrari. And mad as hell.
 That's how Frodo the peregrine falcon was summed up when he shot to fame in
The Courier-Mail 
in 2003. The plucky peregrine, who lives slap bang in the middle of Brisbane city, became the focus of a
Courier-Mail 
 webcamdesigned to give readers an insight into the breeding cycle of these unique and spectacular birds.But Frodo didn't come to our attention under the best of circumstances.It was February and the fiery falcon had laid claim to the rooftop of one of Brisbane city's most prestigious highriseapartment buildings and was ruffling a few feathers.His fearsome and continual swoops on anyone who ventured on to "his" roof had brought maintenance work to ahalt on top of the Admiralty Towers One building.Frodo had become a health and safety issue. Workers needed to access the roof to check exhaust — which extracts steamy air from some of the poshest bath-rooms in town — but not one of them was willing to put a steel-capped toe out there unless they could be pro-tected from the bird.
 
The Adventures of Falcons Frodo and Frieda — Patty Beecham
 At first residents and workers believed Frodo was an osprey or sea eagle.But when
Courier-Mail 
photographer Nathan Richter snapped a photograph of the mystery dive-bomber, ornitholo-gist Roy Sonnenburg quickly identified him as a peregrine falcon — the fastest animal in the world, with a swoopspeed in excess of 300km/h.No wonder those workers were scared.Some people were demanding the bird's eviction, others welcomed this precious piece of nature into the concretejungle of Brisbane's inner city.National Parks and Wildlife officers were called in to assess the situation and Environment Minister Dean Wellsdubbed the city's most popular high-flyer "Frodo", in reference to the
Lord of the Rings 
movies. A compromise was reached, with workers protected by Wildlife rangers when they ventured on to the roof top. Then Admiralty Towers One manager Leon Azar revealed Frodo and a lady friend had in fact been nesting on topof the building since 1999, with eggs usually laid in August.
So the life and death adventure begins!
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