Let us meet a tall bird that spends its days on its feet. A secretarybird stands about 0.9 to 1.5 meters tall, and it has very long legs for a bird of prey. It has a crest of long black feathers at the back of its head. It has short, blunt toes that suit walking. It can fly, but it prefers to walk, and it walks about 20 to 30 kilometres in a day. When it is startled, it runs before it takes off.

Now let us look at where these birds live and at how this bird is listed. Secretarybirds live in Africa, south of the Sahara Desert, and they like open places with short grass, such as savanna. It looks for grassland where the grass is short enough that its view is not blocked. These birds avoid thick forest and dense woodland. As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List lists the secretarybird as Endangered; it was last assessed in April 2020. Losing the places where they live is a threat to secretarybirds. Conservation groups keep track of where secretarybirds nest.

Now let us look at how this bird hunts and what it eats. A secretarybird hunts on the ground. You may have heard that it eats nothing but snakes. In fact, secretarybirds do not always eat snakes. Most of what it eats is arthropods such as grasshoppers, beetles, wasps, spiders and scorpions. It eats small mammals, birds and lizards, and sometimes snakes. It stamps on small prey with its feet and swallows small prey whole. These birds hunt snakes, even venomous ones.

Now let us look at how a secretarybird family begins. These birds build their nests in trees, and the male and the female build the nest together. A nest can be as wide as about 2.4 meters across. It lays one to three eggs, and it lays its eggs two to three days apart. Both secretarybird parents take turns sitting on the eggs. An egg hatches after about 42 to 46 days. Secretarybird parents feed their chicks.

Words to know

• prey: hunted animals
• arthropods: bugs, spiders
• Endangered: at risk
• venomous: has venom
• savanna: open grassland