Secretary Bird
Scientific name: Sagittarius serpentarius
Swahili name [1]: Karani tamba
IUCN status: Vulnerable
Threats and impacts [2]:
The burning of grasslands and intensive livestock grazing degrades the secretary bird’s habitat, while also reducing the availability of prey species. Agriculture and urbanization provide direct threats to the secretary bird’s habitat. There is a small trade for secretary birds, however its impacts are unknown. Indiscriminate poisoning and human-aggravated droughts add to the direct threats.
Conservation:
Birdlife South Africa declared the secretary bird the Bird of the Year 2019 to bring attention to it [3].
The IUCN proposes greater conservation action in a continent-wide monitoring program to gain population and trend data, as well as raising local awareness of threats to the secretary bird.
Interesting information:
Secretary birds prey on small mammals, insects, and even venomous snakes. They kill their prey by stabbing it with their beak or stomping on it, sometimes tossing it into the air [4].
Once thought to gain its name from the pen-like feathers on its head resembling an old time secretary’s pens stuck in their hair, more recently the name is thought to come from a French translation of an Arabic word for “hunter-bird”. The secretary bird’s Latin name refers to an “archer” (Sagittarius) and one of its prey species, snakes (serpentarius) [5].
[1] http://www.kenyalogy.com/eng/fauna/secr.html
[2] BirdLife International 2016. Sagittarius serpentarius. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T22696221A93549951. http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22696221A93549951.en. Downloaded on 14 August 2019.
[4] http://mpalalive.org/field_guide/secretary_bird
[5] https://wildlifeact.com/blog/secretary-bird-sagittarius-serpentarius/
Photo credit: Billy Hau