The Old World (particularly New Guinea)
includes several birds-of paradise, some of which we looked at earlier here. Today we’ll look at the best the New World has come up with: the resplendent quetzal (genus: Pharomachrus; Fig. 1), a member of the (formerly) enigmatic trogon family of extant birds.
Wikipedia reports, “The position of the trogons within the class Aves has been a long-standing mystery. They might constitute a member of the basal radiation of the order Coraciiformes (= kingfishers) or be closely related to mousebirds and owls. A variety of relations have been suggested, including the parrots, cuckoos, toucans, jacamars and puffbirds, rollers, owls and nightjars. The unique arrangement of the toes on the foot (retro digits 1+2) has led many to consider the trogons to have no close relatives, and to place them in their own order, possibly with the similarly atypical mousebirds as their closest relatives.”
Pharomachrus mocinno (La Llave 1832; 40cm snout-vent length +65cm tail) is the extant resplendent quetzal, a member of the trogon family of birds, here nesting with the mousebird, Urocolius. It has large eyes and an odd second toe that, along with pedal digit 1, is also retroverted for perching. This weak flyer has iridescent feathers.
de La Llave P 1832. Memorias sobre el quetzaltototl, género nuevo de aves. Registro Trimestre o collección de historia, literatura, ciencias y artes, por una sociedad de literatos 1: 43–49.
I’ll be doing a museum tour of the Western United States for the next 10 days or so. Following that will be 44 posts praising and/or criticizing various SVP abstracts, probably three to four times a day to keep them somewhat current.
Today I found 23 ‘pending’ comments. Though many were SPAM, others were approved and most were replied to. I apologize for overlooking these, some of which go back two years.
Best wishes and thank you for your attention.