The Secretary Bird.

In my youth I lived with my aunt. She was also one of the most beautiful ladies I had seen so far, whether it was the way she carried herself in her walk, or the elegant dresses she used to wear, or the confident and queenly smile she wore every time of the day, she truly radiated power and glory all over herself. She was a secretary, an administrative secretary at that.

Twenty years later, I am in Shaba national reserve, doing what I do best, guiding tourists. In front of me, the most beautiful and unique creature in the animal world is walking towards me. Her walk resembles the elegant modelling cat walk, calculated, concise and deliberate. She is wearing state of the art lipstick that has a reddish tint, a black and grey blouse with a tail coat to match, a three quarters mini bocker tights smartly hugging her long, immaculate legs. The bare part of her legs reflects a hue of clean satin pink, gleaming in the morning sunshine. Her hair is meticulously black, left loose at the back of her head. At a slight breeze, her hair curls upwards in a form of a mini crown. Instantly I know who she is. She is an amazingly beautiful secretary bird!!

Secretary birds are a rare breed of raptors or birds of prey that are specialised in hunting on the ground – terrestrial predators. They walk through the plains disturbing grasshoppers and sometimes other larger rodents and stamp them to death with the hardened pads on their feet.

The name secretary bird is said to have been coined from the early century’s court secretaries who wore a uniform consisting of a grey wig and grey and black tailed coat which matches the colour describing the secretary bird’s plumage. The tuft of feathers that hang behind the head of the secretary bird resembles the quill feathers that the olden secretaries used for writing and pinning them behind their ears. But the modern ornithologists think that the name could have been derived from a corruption of the Arabic name of the bird, sagr-et-tair or the hunter bird, but call her any other name and she still is a beautiful secretary to me.

As if to confirm my thoughts, the secretary bird in front of me suddenly opened her wings, which spread almost two metres wide, and side stepped as if to avoid something in the grass. Still wing spread, she jumped into the tall grass and started jumping up and down, like the dance of a true Maasai warrior. After several jumps and stamps, she came up to a clearing and on her beak, a large mongoose hang dead.

I had expected her to tear the mongoose into small pieces as she ate, but to my utter amazement, she just gulped the mongoose whole, almost choking herself to death. I was thoroughly embarrassed by this single act of gluttony by such an elegant and beautiful secretary, I wanted to change my mind about her, when I was rudely reminded that I was in the bush and there are rules here. One of them is – eat when you can, for you do not know when the next meal will be available. They are the rules of the jungle. They must be adhered to by all who subscribe, and the penalty is DEATH. Only the fittest will survive.