Secretary Bird

February 11 2019. Enonkishu Conservancy, Kenya. Although it’s just a figure of speech, to say that I found myself here, in Kenya’s Maasai Mara would be an exaggeration; I didn’t find myself here, I planned it all long in advance. I am one of a group of volunteers doing field work for a scientist evaluating mammal populations in this Great Rift Valley corner of the world. My, or I should say Our, focus is on mammals: all species including common stuff like Impala and Zebra, and the not so common like Lion and Leopard. It’s fascinating work bouncing around in the back of an open four-wheel-drive Toyota scanning for and counting wildlife; more, the full story, will come later. This post is about birds, more particularly the Secretary Bird, My Bird of the Day.

Our routine transect started early, right after breakfast just as it was getting light. The first bit of the transect took us through scattered shrub grassland where we usually expect handfuls of Thomson’s Gazelles, Zebras and maybe White- bearded Wildebeests. The scrub gave way to more open grassland and there stalking methodically for their breakfasts were two Secretary Birds, yet another species from my childhood I-don’t-suppose-I’ll-ever-see-one-of-those list. The Secretary Bird is a sensational creature, a raptor with stilts for legs, it is built for open grassland where it hunts for insects, small rodents and famously for snakes which it apparently dispatches by stamping them to death with hardened pads. (It’s probably worth noting that I didn’t see any sign of snakes where we were working; too many White-tailed Mongooses our ranger companions told us.) Secretary Bird is a raptor, in a group of its own but related to Kites and Eagles.

Truly a picture is worth a thousand words and my photos should amply illustrate what an elegant fowl the Secretary Bird is, with its black pantaloons adding a certain seriousness to their demeanour and the long quill-like crown of feathers from which it gets its name. (Although another suggestion is that secretary is derived from the Arabic saqr-et-tair meaning hunter bird.)