page_title: Secretarybird
section_title: Food and feeding
hierarchical_section_title: Secretarybird / Behaviour and ecology / Food and feeding
caption_attribution_description: Sagittarius serpentarius English: A Secretarybird at Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia.
context_page_description: The secretarybird or secretary bird is a large, mostly terrestrial bird of prey. Endemic to Africa, it is usually found in the open grasslands and savanna of the sub-Saharan region. John Frederick Miller described the species in 1779. Although a member of the order Accipitriformes, which also includes many other diurnal birds of prey such as kites, hawks, vultures, and harriers, it is placed in its own family, Sagittariidae. The secretarybird is instantly recognisable as a very large bird with an eagle-like body on crane-like legs that give the bird a height of as much as 1.3 m. The sexes are similar in appearance. Adults have a featherless red-orange face and predominantly grey plumage, with a flattened dark crest and black flight feathers and thighs.
  Breeding can take place at any time of year, but tends to be late in the dry season. The nest is built at the top of a thorny tree, and a clutch of one to three eggs is laid. In years with plentiful food all three young can survive to fledging. The secretarybird hunts and catches prey on the ground, often stomping on victims to kill them. Insects and small vertebrates make up its diet.
context_section_description: Unlike most birds of prey, the secretarybird is largely terrestrial, hunting its prey on foot. Adults hunt in pairs and sometimes as loose familial flocks, stalking through the habitat with long strides.  Prey may consist of insects such as locusts and beetles, mammals ranging in size from mice to hares and mongoose, crabs, lizards, snakes, tortoises, small birds, bird eggs, and sometimes dead animals killed in grass or bush fires. Larger herbivores are not generally hunted, although there are some reports of secretarybirds killing young gazelles and cheetah cubs. The importance of snakes in the diet has been exaggerated in the past, although they can be locally important and venomous species such as adders and cobras are regularly among the types of snake preyed upon. Secretarybirds do not eat carrion.
  The birds often flush out prey from tall grass by stomping on the surrounding vegetation. Their crest feathers may raise during a hunt, which may serve to help scare the target and provide shade for the face. A bird will chase after prey with the wings spread and kill by striking with swift blows of the feet. Only with small prey items such as wasps will the bird use its bill to pick them directly. There are some reports that, when capturing snakes, a secretarybird will take flight with their prey and then drop them to their death, although this has not been verified. Even with larger prey, food is generally swallowed whole through the birds' considerable gape. Occasionally, like other raptors, they will hold down a food item with their feet while tearing it apart with their bill.
  Food that cannot be digested is regurgitated as pellets 40–45 mm (1.6–1.8 in) in diameter and 30–100 mm (1.2–3.9 in) in length. These are dropped on the ground usually near the roost or nest trees. The secretarybird has a relatively short digestive tract in comparison to other large African birds with more mixed diets such as the kori bustard. The foregut is specialised for the consumption of large amounts of meat and there is little need for the mechanical breakdown of food. The crop is dilated and the gizzard is nonmuscular as in other carnivorous birds. The large intestine has a pair of vestigial ceca as there is no requirement for the fermentative digestion of plant material.
  Secretarybirds specialise in stomping their prey until it is killed or immobilised.  This method of hunting is commonly applied to lizards or snakes.  An adult male trained to strike at a rubber snake on a force plate was found to hit with a force equal to five times its own body weight, with a contact period of only 10–15 milliseconds. This short time of contact suggests that the secretarybird relies on superior visual targeting to determine the precise location of the prey's head. Although little is known about its visual field, it is assumed that it is large, frontal and binocular. Secretarybirds have unusually long legs (nearly twice as long as other ground birds of the same body mass), which is thought to be an adaptation for the bird's unique stomping/striking hunting method. However, these long limbs appear to also lower its running efficiency. Ecophysiologist Steve Portugal and colleagues have hypothesised that the extinct Phorusrhacidae (terror birds) may have employed a similar hunting technique to secretarybirds because they are anatomically similar, although they are not closely related.
  Secretarybirds rarely encounter other predators, except in the case of tawny eagles which will steal their kills. Eagles mainly steal larger prey and will attack secretarybirds both singly or in pairs. Secretarybird pairs are sometimes successful in driving the eagles away and may even knock them down and pin them to the ground.
  Secretarybirds, like all birds, have haematozoan blood parasites that include Leucocytozoon beaurepairei Dias 1954 recorded from Mozambique. Wild birds from Tanzania have been found to have Hepatozoon ellisgreineri, a genus that is unique among avian haematozoa in maturing within granulocytes, mainly heterophils. Ectoparasites include the lice Neocol
caption: Juvenile with lizard kill at Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia
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