It is mostly terrestrial, spending most of its time on the ground, and is usually found in the open grasslands and savanna of the sub-Saharan region.

A member of the order Accipitriformes, which also includes many other diurnal birds of prey such as eagles, hawks, kites, vultures, and harriers, it is placed in its own family, Sagittariidae.

Adults have a featherless red-orange face and predominantly grey plumage, with a flattened dark crest and black flight feathers and thighs.

Cathartidae – New World vultures (7 species) Sagittariidae – Secretarybird Accipitridae – Kites, hawks and eagles (256 species) Pandionidae – Osprey The Dutch naturalist Arnout Vosmaer described the secretarybird in 1769 on the basis of a live specimen that had been sent to Holland from the Cape of Good Hope two years earlier by an official of the Dutch East India Company.

[5][6] Ian Glenn of the University of the Free State suggests that Vosmaer's "sagittarius" is a misheard or mis-transcribed form of "secretarius", rather than the other way around.

[7] In 1779 the English illustrator John Frederick Miller included a coloured plate of the secretarybird in his Icones animalium et plantarum and coined the binomial name Falco serpentarius.

[10] A second edition of Miller's plates was published in 1796 as Cimelia physica, with added text by English naturalist George Shaw, who named it Vultur serpentarius.

[13] In 1835 the Irish naturalist William Ogilby spoke at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London and proposed three species of secretarybird, distinguishing those from Senegambia as having broader crest feathers than those from South Africa, and reporting a distinct species from the Philippines based on the writings of Pierre Sonnerat in his Voyage à la Nouvelle-Guinée.

[4] In 1780 the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon suggested that the name secretary/secrétaire had been chosen because of the long quill-like feathers at the top of the bird's neck,[22] reminiscent of a quill pen behind the ear of an ancient scribe.

[27] Immature birds have yellow rather than orange bare skin on their faces, more brownish plumage, shorter tail feathers and greyish rather than brown irises.

[24] Secretarybirds make this sound when greeting their mates or in a threat display or fight against other birds, sometimes throwing their head backwards at the same time.

[24] The secretarybird is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa and is generally non-migratory, though it may be locally nomadic as it follows rainfall and the resulting abundance of prey.

The secretarybird prefers open grasslands, savannas and shrubland (Karoo) rather than forests and dense shrubbery that may impede its cursorial existence.

It is rarer in grasslands in northern parts of its range that otherwise appear similar to areas in southern Africa where it is abundant, suggesting it may avoid hotter regions.

[29] The oldest confirmed secretarybird in the wild was a 5-year-old that was banded as a nestling on 23 July 2011 in Bloemfontein and recovered 440 km (270 mi) away in Mpumalanga on 7 June 2016.

[30] Secretarybirds, like all birds, have haematozoan blood parasites that include Leucocytozoon beaurepairei (Dias 1954 recorded from Mozambique).

[31][32] Wild birds from Tanzania have been found to have Hepatozoon ellisgreineri, a genus that is unique among avian haematozoa in maturing within granulocytes, mainly neutrophils.

During courtship, they exhibit a nuptial display by soaring high with undulating flight patterns and calling with guttural croaking.

[38] Prey may consist of insects such as locusts, other grasshoppers, wasps, and beetles, but small vertebrates often form main biomass.

[27] The secretarybird has a relatively short digestive tract in comparison to large African birds with more mixed diets, such as the kori bustard.

This short time of contact suggests that the secretarybird relies on superior visual targeting to determine the precise location of the prey's head.

[27] The secretarybird is depicted on an ivory knife handle recovered from Abu Zaidan in Upper Egypt, dating to the Naqada III culture (c. 3,200 BC).

[49] With its wings outstretched, it represents growth, and its penchant for killing snakes is symbolic as the protector of the South African state against enemies.

[54][predatory publisher] The Xhosa people call the bird inxhanxhosi and attribute great intelligence to it in folklore.

[56][57] The German biologist Ragnar Kinzelbach proposed in 2008 that the secretarybird was recorded in the 13th-century work De arte venandi cum avibus by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.

The 16th-century French priest and traveller André Thevet also wrote a description of a mysterious bird in 1558 that has been likened by Kinzelbach to this species.

[58] The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the secretarybird in 2016 as a vulnerable species and as endangered in 2020, due to a recent rapid decline across its entire range.

[1] Long term monitoring across South Africa between 1987 and 2013 has shown that populations have declined across the country, even in protected areas such as Kruger National Park due to woody plant encroachment, an increase in the tall vegetation cover,[59] resulting in loss of open habitat that the species prefers.

[60] As a population, the secretarybird is mainly threatened by loss of habitat due to fragmentation by roads and development and overgrazing of grasslands by livestock.

To address this problem, the zoo staff removed the eggs from the nest each time they were laid so that they could be incubated and hatched at a safer location.