The Secretarybird Project works to safeguard one of Africa’s most iconic yet rapidly declining raptors. Through long-term tracking, field research, and close collaboration with landowners, conservation authorities, and industry, we uncover how Secretarybirds move through our landscapes and how modern threats — from habitat loss to powerlines and fencing — affect their survival. Our work produces practical conservation tools, including movement maps, habitat-use insights, collision-risk assessments, and land-management guidelines that protect birds where they live, breed, and hunt.
We do this because Secretarybirds are disappearing at an alarming rate. Their future depends on informed action, strong science, and collective stewardship. By bridging research with real-world conservation, we aim to secure these open, wild spaces — and ensure that future generations can still watch this remarkable bird stride across South Africa’s grasslands and savannas.
Satellite Tracking & Movement Ecology – We run one of Africa’s most comprehensive Secretarybird tracking programmes, generating thousands of GPS fixes that reveal how birds use their territories, where they face risks, and how conservation measures can be targeted. These data directly inform national planning, industry guidelines, and on-the-ground interventions.
Nest Monitoring & Breeding Insights – By working with landowners, field teams, and community partners, we track breeding attempts across the country, improving understanding of nesting success, threats, and long-term population trends.
Collision & Infrastructure Risk Assessment – Using our tracking data, field surveys, and partnerships with Eskom and environmental practitioners, we identify high-risk powerlines and landscapes. This work guides mitigation, reduces collisions, and shapes national best-practice guidelines.
Habitat & Land-Use Conservation – We translate science into practical tools for farmers and land managers — from vegetation and fire-management recommendations to maps that highlight key foraging and nesting areas.
Adult Secretarybird
Started in 2011, BirdLife South Africa’s Secretarybird Project is a long-term research and conservation initiative focused on improving our understanding of the ecology, distribution, movements, and conservation requirements of the Endangered Secretarybird in South Africa.
Secretarybirds have undergone substantial population declines across much of their sub-Saharan range, with habitat transformation, infrastructure-related mortality, disturbance, and other human-driven pressures contributing to ongoing reductions in numbers. Effective conservation of the species requires a detailed understanding of how Secretarybirds use the landscape throughout their lives, where important breeding areas occur, and how individuals interact with an increasingly modified environment. In South Africa, the population appears relatively stable, currently estimated at 6,000-11,000 individuals. Despite this encouraging outlook, the species remains regionally classified as Vulnerable, reflecting ongoing conservation concerns and the need to ensure that populations remain secure across the country’s grassland, savanna, and agricultural landscapes.
To address these knowledge gaps, the project combines field-based research, satellite tracking, nest monitoring, bird ringing, citizen science, and spatial analysis. Since the inception of the satellite tracking programme in 2012, more than 600,000 GPS locations have been collected from Secretarybirds across South Africa, providing one of the most comprehensive movement datasets available for the species. These data allow researchers to investigate habitat selection, home range size, dispersal behaviour, breeding ecology, seasonal movements, and interactions with threats such as powerlines, fences, roads, and renewable energy developments.
Nest monitoring forms another important component of the programme. By tracking breeding attempts and reproductive success across multiple regions, researchers can better understand factors influencing nesting outcomes and identify landscapes that consistently support successful breeding. Ringing of nestlings further supports long-term monitoring by providing information on survival, dispersal, and recruitment into the breeding population.
The project works closely with landowners, conservation organisations, citizen scientists, and academic institutions across South Africa. Information generated through the programme directly informs conservation planning, environmental impact assessments, species management guidelines, and national conservation strategies aimed at securing the future of Secretarybirds in South Africa.
Secretarybirds are highly mobile terrestrial predators that utilise extensive areas of the landscape while searching for food, breeding, and dispersing between suitable habitats. Understanding how the species uses the environment is essential for effective conservation planning, particularly in a country where natural grasslands and savannas are increasingly fragmented by agriculture, infrastructure, and urban development. Despite occurring over large parts of South Africa, Secretarybirds show a strong preference for open landscapes that allow them to effectively detect and pursue prey. Natural grasslands are among the most important habitats for species, particularly extensive areas with relatively low tree density and heterogeneous vegetation structure. Secretarybirds also make use of savanna habitats, pastures, and certain agricultural areas, provided that sufficient open foraging habitat remains available. Dense woodland, forests, and heavily transformed urban environments are generally avoided.
Tracking map for “Aragon”
As a predominantly terrestrial predator, the Secretarybird spends most of its time walking through these open habitats in search of prey. Individuals may cover considerable distances while foraging and regularly move between feeding areas, roost sites, and breeding territories. Habitat use varies between individuals, age classes, seasons, and breeding status, reflecting the dynamic nature of the species’ ecology.
© Konrad Andrag
Research conducted through the long-term tracking study has revealed that landscape utilisation changes considerably throughout the annual cycle. Breeding adults typically concentrate their activities around nesting territories during the breeding season, while non-breeding birds and juveniles may range over much larger areas. Following fledging, young Secretarybirds can disperse substantial distances from their natal areas before eventually establishing territories of their own. Understanding these movements is essential for identifying important habitats, maintaining landscape connectivity, and ensuring that conservation measures are implemented at appropriate spatial scales.
Secretarybird Habitat Suitability Model
Using the satellite-tracking data, the project has developed a national Habitat Suitability Model (HSM) for Secretarybirds in South Africa. This model combines thousands of bird locations with environmental variables to identify areas that provide suitable conditions for the species. The HSM allows researchers to predict where Secretarybirds are most likely to occur, identify important habitats and movement corridors, assess potential impacts of proposed developments, and guide conservation planning at both regional and national scales. It also helps identify areas where the species may occur but remains under-recorded, allowing future survey and monitoring efforts to be targeted more effectively.
© Hanroe Taljaard
Monitoring Secretarybird nests forms a critical component of the project’s research and conservation activities. Information collected from nesting sites helps improve our understanding of breeding success, nesting habitat requirements, productivity, and the factors influencing reproductive outcomes across South Africa.
New nest locations are identified through a network of farmers, landowners, conservation practitioners, bird guides, and citizen scientists. Additional reports are regularly received through social media platforms, traditional media coverage, and public outreach initiatives. Once a potential nesting site has been reported, field surveys are conducted to confirm the presence of a nest and assess its status.
Secretarybird chicks in their nest
For each nesting site, detailed information is collected on the nest tree, surrounding habitat, landscape characteristics, and land-use practices. These data are used to better understand the environmental factors associated with Secretarybird breeding and to identify the characteristics of suitable nesting habitat across the species’ range.
Active nests are monitored throughout the breeding season to determine breeding outcomes, including clutch size, hatching success, fledging success, and causes of nest failure where these can be established. Shortly before fledging, nestlings may be ringed and biological samples collected as part of ongoing research into population ecology, movement patterns, genetics, and conservation management.
Nest monitoring is an ongoing process, as nests may be abandoned, collapse, or be relocated to new sites in subsequent breeding seasons. The project currently maintains records for more than 300 known Secretarybird nesting sites across South Africa. However, the geographic extent of the species’ range and limited monitoring capacity make it impossible to visit every known site annually. As a result, intensive monitoring efforts are currently focused on the eastern Free State, where long-term monitoring provides valuable insights into breeding performance and population trends.
Secretarybird in flight
Although Secretarybirds spend most of their lives on the ground, flight remains an important part of their ecology. Individuals use flight to move efficiently between foraging areas, travel to and from nesting territories, disperse across the landscape, and respond to changing environmental conditions. Young birds may undertake extensive exploratory movements following fledging, while adults regularly use flight to travel between key resources within their home ranges.
Secretarybirds are well adapted for soaring flight and frequently take advantage of rising air currents to minimise energy expenditure, and can reach heights of up to two kilometres. Rather than relying solely on continuous flapping flight, they often use thermal uplift and slope-generated winds to gain altitude before gliding across the landscape. This strategy allows them to travel considerable distances while conserving energy.
The Secretarybird Project is investigating how high Secretarybirds fly and how flight behaviour varies between individuals, age classes, and seasons. Understanding flight height is important because it helps researchers assess potential interactions with human-made infrastructure, such as powerlines and wind-energy developments.
Preliminary analyses indicate that most Secretarybird flights occur relatively close to the ground, although individuals can reach much greater heights when environmental conditions are favourable. Flight height varies considerably between seasons and age classes, reflecting differences in weather conditions, movement requirements, and behaviour. Our research has also shown that a substantial proportion of flights occur within the height range occupied by overhead infrastructure, highlighting the importance of incorporating flight ecology into conservation planning and environmental impact assessments.
By combining tracking technology with spatial analysis, the project is helping to improve our understanding of how Secretarybirds use the aerial environment and how conservation measures can reduce risks to birds moving through increasingly developed landscapes.
Secretarybirds are opportunistic predators that feed on a wide variety of prey captured while walking through open landscape. Their long legs, exceptional eyesight, and powerful legs allow them to locate and subdue prey on the ground, making them one of Africa’s most distinctive terrestrial birds of prey.
Although Secretarybirds are widely known for their ability to hunt snakes, reptiles typically represent only one component of a diverse diet. Research has shown that Secretarybirds consume a broad range of prey, including grasshoppers and other large insects, rodents, hares, lizards, snakes, birds, bird eggs, and a variety of other small vertebrates. The composition of the diet varies according to local prey availability, habitat type, season, and breeding status.
Studies of prey remains, pellets, and food delivered to nests suggest that insects and small mammals can be particularly important food sources. Grasshoppers and locusts are frequently recorded in dietary studies, while rodents may form a substantial component of the diet in some areas. Reptiles are also regularly taken, especially in open grassland habitats where they are readily detected.
Despite their reputation as snake hunters, scientific studies have found that snakes generally comprise a relatively small proportion of recorded prey items. Nevertheless, Secretarybirds are capable of capturing a wide range of snake species, including venomous species, and will readily exploit this food source when opportunities arise. Individual birds may occasionally consume multiple snakes in a single feeding event when prey is abundant.
Secretarybirds typically hunt by walking slowly through suitable habitat while scanning the ground for movement. Once prey is detected, it is pursued and captured using rapid strikes of the feet. Larger prey items may be dismembered before being consumed, while adults provisioning nestlings often carry prey to the nest or regurgitate food to young chicks.
As one of Africa’s largest terrestrial predators, the Secretarybird plays an important ecological role in regulating populations of insects, rodents, reptiles, and other small animals within the ecosystems it inhabits.
