13 years on...

The Secretarybird tracking study

- SUSAN SCOTT

Despite the Secretarybird being, in my admittedly biased view, the most iconic bird on the African continent and a firm favourite among the birding public, very little was known about its movements when BirdLife South Africa's research began just over a decade ago. A year after the species was classified as Vulnerable in 2011 by the IUCN, the first tracking devices were deployed on nestling birds, marking the start of what would become the longest tracking study for this species. For the following 13 years, the Secretarybird Project has kept a close eye on the movements of these long-legged raptors, and the insights gained have been fascinating!

Getting started

The study’s first phase, when 10 birds were fitted with tracking devices, took place from 2012 to 2017. Powered by a miniature solar panel, a small GPS unit was fitted – like a backpack – to each bird with a Teflon harness and programmed to record a geospatial location at set intervals. The units, weighing just 35 grams and reporting via satellite or over cellular networks, have been key components of our research activities ever since.

The study had several goals: to determine the birds’ habitat and landscape use; to work out how young birds move around a nest after fledging; and to learn where they disperse to once they are self-sufficient and independent. Almost 50 000 data points were collected from the first 10 tracked birds, and BirdLife South Africa staff members Dr Hanneline Smit-Robinson, Dr Melissa Whitecross and Ernst Retief published the results in 2019.