This is bird note.

Meet the secretary bird, a bird of prey like no other on earth.

Picture if you can a slim eagle striding through the grasslands of sub-Saharan Africa

on tall, slender legs like those of a crane.

Standing four feet tall, the secretary bird is beautiful, feathered in silver, set off by black

wings and leggings. The face is half covered in bright red skin. Beyond the black tail,

extend two long white plumes tipped in black,

and from the back of the head dangles a spray of long black feathers.

Utterly fantastic in appearance, these specialized raptors are also serious carnivores.

Secretary birds track down their prey not on the wing,

but on foot, often walking, more than 20 miles a day. They hunt rodents, snakes, insects,

lizards, and other animals, dispatching them by stamping repeatedly with rapid, powerful kicks of their talons.

Secretary, in the bird's name, might follow from its black head quills, reminiscent of 19th-century

human secretaries with black quill pens. But more probably,

secretary derives from the Arabic word for hunter bird.

For bird note,

I'm Michael Stein.