Often when you think of a bird of prey you think of hook billed raptors soaring overhead looking for food down below. This preconceived image makes it hard for us to imagine the Secretarybird (Sagittarius serpentarius) as a member of this elitist species of birds, but they are. These long legged, gangly birds of prey spend the majority of their time running around on the ground looking for their food – they have a real liking for snakes. The lower third of their long legs are scaled to help protect against possible snake bites whilst attempting to club them into submission, but they can also fly away when they need to or to get up in to trees to nest or roost. Some say they are named after the feathers in their head plumage, which are thought to resemble the ‘quills’ used by secretaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, but others say it is named from a similar sounding Arabic word meaning hunter bird.
