text x_quick_Title2=Class: Aves~Order: Trogoniformes~Family: Trogonidae~(Pharomachrus mocinno)
text x_quick=Where In the World~` Quetzals live in the high mountain forests of Central America from southern Mexico to Panama.~` No one knows how many quetzals there are - all they know is that there are a lot fewer today than there used to be. The cloud forests where the quetzal lives are being developed - without cloud forests, the quetzal can't survive.~ ~Take a Look!~` The quetzal is about 14 inches long. The male also has long streamer feathers that can be two or three feet long.~` Quetzals have a brilliant green plumage that seems washed in gold, bright scarlet underparts, and the males have long tail feathers that can be two or three feet long. The female is less colourful than the male.~` They have four toes on each foot. To help them grip branches, two of the toes face backwards and two face forwards. (That's called having a zygodactyl foot.)~ ~All in the Family~` The quetzal is a member of the brightly colourful trogon family. Its relatives are found in the Americas (including the elegant trogon which nests in southern Arizona), Africa (like the narina trogon), and Asia (the red-headed trogon is found from Nepal and China to the island of Sumatra).~ ~Just the Facts~` Quetzals live in the trees of cloud rainforests, high in the mountains. They aren't very social with each other, although a mated pair shares parenting duties.~` The male's exotic tail coverts (feathers that lie over the tail) are shed at the end of every breeding season. Each year, he grows a new set.~` Almost all of a quetzal's diet is fruit, although they will also eat insects, small frogs, lizards, and snails.~` Females are double-brooded, that means she can lay two groups of two to three eggs in one year.~` The male and female take turns incubating the eggs. She sits on them for most of the time, but he takes over occasionally in the morning and afternoon so she can find food.
;Habitat
text x_hab= Resplendent quetzals live in a very special habitat called the cloud forest. (It's sort of the high-altitude version of a rainforest.) Cloud forests develop in mountains above 4,000 feet where moisture is just as likely to come from low-lying clouds that rest right on the mountain as it is to come from rain. The quetzals live in the trees, but they stay fairly close to the ground. (Their nests are rarely higher than 80 or 90 feet up, and usually are lower than that.) Quetzals eat a lot of different things, but they like fruit the best. To be really good quetzal habitat, a cloud forest has to have a good supply of the bird's favourite fruit, from the Ocotea subspecies, which is a relative of the avocado. ~\
The cloud forests that still have resplendent quetzals are fairly isolated. They're found from the highlands of Oaxaca and Chiapas in Mexico through central Guatemala - particularly in Alta Verapas and the Sierra de las Minas mountains - and through Nicaragua. There are cloud forests in Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras and on the border between Honduras and El Salvador. No one knows how many resplendent quetzals there are left, but it seems that where there's cloud habitat, the birds are doing all right. ~\
The birds are particularly welcome in Guatemala, where they have been declared the national bird. The second largest city in Guatemala, Quetzaltenango, was named for the bird and means "place of the quetzal." They even named their money for this elegant bird - instead of paying for things with pounds or pesos, people in Guatemala pay in money called quetzals.
;Food
text x_eat= When quetzals are first born, their parents feed them almost nothing but insects. Later, they are fed fruits, small lizards, and snails. By the time the chicks can fly, they're eating the same diet as their parents, which is 80% fruits. ~\
Quetzals love Ocotea fruit, which is like wild avocados - they eat them whole and then spit out the very large pit. Naturally, they eat whatever fruit is available throughout the year, but special favourites beside the wild avocado seem to be plums, figs, and berries. Whether the quetzal is eating insects and small animals or fruits and berries, it flutters from branch to branch and seizes food as it goes.
;Habits and Characteristics
text x_life= The Aztec and Mayan civilisations that lived in Central America when the first Europeans landed there thought that the quetzal was a sacred bird. They worshipped a god called Quetzalcoatl who was a winged serpent that ruled the air. The quetzal was the god's representative on earth. Only priests and rulers were allowed to wear the quetzal's feathers, which were gathered without harming the bird. (So they wouldn't offend the god, the Aztecs and Mayans captured quetzals and plucked out their feathers. Then they let the birds go unharmed so they could grow new sets during the next breeding season.) ~\
When the first Europeans arrived in Central America, they didn't believe the quetzal was real. The bird the Aztecs and Mayans described was so fantastically exotic that the Europeans decided the native people were pulling their legs - at best, they thought the bird was a myth. It took over 200 years before naturalists on the other side in the ocean believed any bird could be so magnificent as to glitter with green, gold, blue, and red. ~\
But it's true - a quetzal's plumage glitters so brightly that at times it seems to be dusted with gold power. The shaft of a quetzal's iridescent feathers are almost like a prism. When the angle is right, the feather throws light and shining colour back at the viewer. Sometimes the quetzal seems to be dark and drab - then as it moves in the light, it is suddenly radiated with colour. The effect - especially on unsuspecting early settlers - is unbelievably dramatic. (Hummingbirds have the same special "prism" feathers - sometimes they're dully dark in colour, but when the viewer is at just the right angle, the tiny bird seems to glow like a jewel with colour. It's very hard to photograph a quetzal or a hummingbird to show off their colour.) ~\
The graceful, elegant tail feathers help the male attract a mate. Once they find each other, they carve a nest in a rotting tree. Their carving ability is like a woodpeckers', and they can quickly excavate a nesting hole that is about 18 inches deep and large enough for three or four light blue eggs and an incubating parent. It takes 18 or 19 days before the eggs hatch. For most of the time, the female incubates the eggs, but when she gets hungry, her mate takes over. This usually happens at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. It's easy to tell when the male is sitting on the eggs because his tail is so long that the two feathers stick out the hole and wave in the breeze. He sits with the feathers going over his back and up to the entrance. By the time the nesting season is over, the long feathers are damaged and broken. They eventually come out to make way for fresh new ones for the next year.
;Threats
text x_threat= For many years, people stayed away from the cloud forests. The habitat, being at least 4,000 feet up a mountain, is difficult to get to, and not very hospitable once you're there. So the resplendent quetzal, and all the other cloud forest residents, had no real worries. Then, as places below got more crowded, the mountains became more appealing to people. The cloud forests began to be cut down to create terraced fields for farming, to make clearings for cattle to graze, or to thin out the forest for coffee plantations. ~\
There aren't many cloud forests left these days, and that means that there aren't very many quetzals left, either. The few remaining cloud forests have safe populations of quetzals, but there's almost no way to protect the habitat from being destroyed. There are a few other problems for the quetzal. For a long time, people killed the birds to get the feathers - apparently, modern people don't have the same patience as the Aztecs and Mayans who harvested the tails without
