Elegant Trogons by Helen Snyder

Who can forget their first sighting of the Elegant Trogon? For many, a trogon was the Grail Bird that brought them south to remote Portal, almost to Mexico, in search of this life bird. With its size, big yellow hooked beak, ringing voice, and colors of the Mexican flag, the first impression is that it's more parrot than songbird. Though it's the weight of a thrasher, about 2.5 ounces, it is almost a foot long, much of that length being tail.

Once our residents arrive in April and May, with a little time and effort you'll find one in the cool green closed-canopy riparian forest above the Visitor Information Center. South Fork has been the classic and most dependable stretch of forest where your chances are best of seeing this lifer. Though trogons are migratory, one or two sometimes winter in South Fork, an indication of just how perfect a place it is for this bird.

[by Maya Decker]  

 

South Fork became the national focus for trogon searches over forty years ago when the numbers of baby-boomer birders and bird photographers was growing. New field guides, better optics and camera equipment were making birding such a popular pastime that adding life birds became a mission for many. There were no rules in South Fork then against playing recorded vocalizations to attract trogons the way there is now, and nests were easily found and staked out. Photographers were accused of trimming obscuring branches around nests, birders were accused of trampling vegetation underfoot, and the grumbling discontent was growing.

Young birder Rick Taylor was working on a Portal fire crew for the Coronado National Forest's Douglas Ranger District in the 70's. He witnessed the ongoing human pressure on the trogons and asked his boss to let him take a half a day off to make a handsome cautionary sign that was posted at the entrance to South Fork, complete with a colorful trogon in bas relief. 

It stood till the USFS administration decided it had to come down, as their job was and is the management of the forest - the vegetation part, not the animals in it. Rick's sign disappeared but his and the public's concern continued, leading eventually to the formal prohibition against vocalization playbacks in South Fork and its designation as a Zoological Botanical Area.

Photograph by Rick Taylor from his

Hiking Trails and Wilderness Routes of the Chiricahua Mountains.

The Coppery-tailed Trogon's name was later changed to the Elegant Trogon, and despite its popularity today it remains a little-studied bird. Annual 'Trogon counts' happen around June 1 every year, started by Rick Taylor and now facilitated by Tucson Audubon Society. Volunteers spread out in the riparian zone, listening for calling trogons and documenting the time and direction of sightings. 

These data are analyzed to yield a minimum count and in recent years, the Cave Creek-South Fork population has been under a dozen birds, down by half from higher years before extreme drought took its toll. This past winter of 2018-2019 brought much better rains and the environment is responding encouragingly. Hopefully this year's pairs will get busy and multiply. The species is capable of fledging three young at a time though two is usual, and two broods a year is possible though not common.

How long do trogons live? No banding study has ever been done - but with every bird being photographed well multiple times within a year and between years, it should be possible to use the intricate fine bands of black and white on the underside of the tail to identify individuals from one year to the next for a demographic study! These tail markings are like bar codes, specific to the individual. Other animals' bar code-like markings have been used to identify individuals this way, from California Condors to right whales to snakes. It's an ideal hands-off way to study longevity and survivorship in a small population like ours, now that digital photography is with us. Each Elegant Trogon is probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the economy of Portal - it's worth studying.

    

                                             [Both by Tony Donaldson]  

  

Another species of trogon occasionally finds its way here: the larger, heavier Eared Trogon, a bird of high-elevation mixed conifer forest just over the 

border in Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental where it is relatively common. Word of an Eared  Trogon he re has led birders to pack up and drive non-stop 2000 miles to

Portal.

One such sighting in  the 70's m ade the national news and attracted our Congressional re presentative Mo Udall to Portal where Rick Taylor and Barb Roth guided hi m on his search.