From Opus

Male on left, Female on right; these photos show the Gartered Trogon type.
Photos by Gary Clark.
Location: La Selva Biological Research Station, near Sarapiqui, Costa Rica.

Includes Gartered Trogon

Trogon violaceus

[edit] Identification

Length 23cm. Sits very upright on horizontal branches. Male: Blue head and upper breast, green back, becoming bluer on the rump, a white line separates the breast from the golden yellow underparts, but this is sometimes hard to detect (may to some extent depend on subspecies). Yellow circular eye-ring. White undertail with black barring, black wings vermiculated with white.
Female: Dark grey back, head and breast. White oval-shaped eye-ring may only consist of front and back (brackets).

[edit] Distribution

Lowlands of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, the Guianas and Trinidad.

[edit] Taxonomy

Six subspecies are recognized.

• braccatus
• concinnus
• caligatus
• violaceus
• ramonianus
• crissalis

Female of subspecies violaceus.
Photos by Graham Osborne.
Location: Asa Wright Nature Centre, Trinidad, December 2005.

A proposal for splitting Gartered Trogon (Trogon caligatus = Northern Violaceous Trogon = the first three of the subspecies) have been accepted by the SACC; Opus is waiting for the world-wide checklists. The two forms would be separating at a line going from western Ecuador, south-western to north-eastern Colombia to north-western Venezuela, with Gartered Trogon north-west of this line and Violaceous Trogon south-east of this line. However, more splitting may be in the future: some feel that the last two subspecies also should be split off as one separate species, but more data is necessary.

[edit] Habitat

Moist tropical forests.

[edit] Behaviour

It nests in a wasp, ant or termite nest or a hole in a rotten tree; 2-3 white eggs are laid.

The diet includes insects and small fruit.

Song is described in variable ways from different geographic regions.

[edit] References

1. Clements, James F. 2007. The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. 6th ed., with updates to October 2007. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801445019
2. SACC proposal to split Gartered from Violaceous Trogon read August 2009

• List of references

[edit] External Links