Secretarybird
Sagittarius serpentarius
— Where the name comes from
Sagittarius means “archer”, but the origin is probably a mishearing: the Arabic saqr-et-tair, “hunting bird”, would have been heard by Europeans as a familiar Latin word. The English secretary bird has an equally uncertain and prettier explanation — the black feathers sprouting from the nape were said to look like the quills clerks tucked behind their ears. Serpentarius states a fact: it eats snakes.
— Facts
- Group
- Birds · Aves
- Order
- Diurnal birds of prey
- Habitat
- Open savannah, grassland, short-grass steppe
- Range
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Size
- 125–150 cm tall, wingspan 191–220 cm, 3.4–4.3 kg
- Diet
- Snakes, lizards, rodents, grasshoppers, eggs
- Lifespan
- 19 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It covers up to thirty kilometres a day on foot while hunting.
- 02
It has the longest legs, in proportion, of any bird of prey.
- 03
It nests on the crown of thorn acacias, on platforms two metres across.
— What sets it apart
It kills by kicking, and the kick has been measured. Having a trained bird strike a rubber snake laid on a force plate showed that it delivers a force equal to five times its own body weight in fifteen thousandths of a second: too fast for a snake to react, and too brief to leave the bird exposed to the bite. Precision matters more than power — it aims for the head — and the animal corrects in mid-air, watching the prey until the last instant before impact.
