
Secretary bird (frontal), Beekse Bergen, Netherlands
(creative edit, background removed)
Zoo photos of one of my all-time favorite birds. A combination of elegance and brutality. In the wild, this bird stomps snakes to death and waits on the edge of bush fires to pick up fleeing animals. Hence, I call it the secreterrorist bird.

The Secretarybird or Secretary Bird is a large, mostly terrestrial bird of prey. Endemic to Africa, it is usually found in the open grasslands and savannah of the sub-Sahara. Although a member of the order Accipitriformes, which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as kites, buzzards, vultures, and harriers, it is given its own family, Sagittariidae.