Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

The secretary bird, native to South Africa, looks like the hatchling of a midnight rendezvous between an eagle, a cockatoo, a vulture and an ostrich.

Like the eagle, the secretary bird is a raptor that soars on a seven-foot wingspan and sports an aquiline beak for tearing at its prey. Like the vulture, it has patches of bare red skin on its face; and like the ostrich, this bird is a swift runner on its long slender legs.

Though an excellent flyer, the secretary bird prefers a terrestrial lifetsyle. It moves through tall savannah grasses in search of lizards, tortoises, insects and small birds. It's also famous for capturing snakes, which the bird incapacitates with kicks and stomps from its powerful feet.

Attached to the back of the secretary bird's head and neck is a crest of long, black-tipped feathers which gives the creature a cockatoo-like appearance. The spray of feathers at the bird's neck suggested a name to the first English speakers to encounter the bird in the 18th century, evoking the secretaries of the 1700s who stuck an abundance of feathered quill pens behind their ears or in their powdered wigs. Hence the name secretary bird.

Radio Script > Secretary Bird