After an early morning hike into the canyon, I (JCM) returned to the parking lot and waited for a couple of friends to come-off the trail. A woman pulled in and parked a few places from my Jeep. Exiting her car, she asked me, “how far do I have to walk?” My response was, “for what?” She replied, “to see the trogons.” On my way back to the parking lot, I passed about eight birders watching several trogons. I said, “they are between a mile and two miles up the trail.” She responded with some vocalization, expressing her displeasure at walking that far, and proceeded up the trail. The Elegant Trogon’s flashy plumage and exotic appearance has drawn thousands of visitors to the sky islands of Southern Arizona and specifically to Madera Canyon. In Arizona, the trogon is at the northern edge of its range. Most of its distribution to the south is in Mexico, and Central America.
The latter half of the 19th was post-Darwin and Wallace. People interested in science began to view the world through the lens of evolution. Scientific organizations ranged from informal clubs to formal organizations that published journals.
Specimens from around the globe were sent back to Europe, where they were examined, described, illustrated, and published. Birds had a particularly large number of followers. Some were bird watchers, others were bird collectors, and a few were scientists.
John Gould started his working life at age 14, as an apprentice gardener. At the same time his interest in animals, particularly birds grew. By age 20 he was an expert taxidermist and set himself up in business in London. His skill and reputation lead him to the position of the first preserver [AKA the ‘bird-stuffer’] and curator at the museum of the Zoological Society of London, before age 30. All of this was accomplished with little, if any, education. Gould also became the author, artist, and publisher of a series of books that became a monograph of birds of the world.
Gould’s obsession with birds began in the late 1820s. A collection of birds from the Himalayas arrived at the Zoological Society’s Museum. Gould conceived the idea of publishing a volume of imperial folio sized (12 x 19 inches) with 100 hand-colored lithographs. This project became, A Century of Birds Hitherto Unfigured from the Himalaya Mountains, 1830-32. The text was written by N. A. Vigor, Gould’s friend, and mentor. Elizabeth Gould made the drawings and transferred them to the large lithographic stones. When he could not find a publisher, Gould self- published the work. It appeared in twenty monthly parts, four plates to a volume.
Gould’s design and format continued for the next fifty years. In the volumes that followed, he wrote his text. Eventually, fifty volumes were published on the world’s birds, except for Africa. Gould also presented more than 300 scientific papers. The hand-colored lithographic plates numbered more than 3300. Although he did not paint the final illustrations, this description is largely correct: he was the collector, specimen buyer, taxonomist, publisher, agent, and distributor of the parts or volumes. Even though Gould was not the artist, the birds’ design and the natural arrangement was due to John Gould’s genius. His wife was his first artist, and several others followed her.
Gould (1835) noticed some coloration differences in Trogon elegans populations. Today five subspecies are considered valid. They are in two groups, the northern group with T. e. ambiguus, T. e. goldmani, and T. e. canescens , and the southern groupwith T. e. elegans and T. e. lubricus.
Five subspecies of the Elegant Trogon were recognized by Peters (1945) and divided into two groups. Each group was differentiated by the pattern on the ventral side of the flight feathers on the tail and the coloration on the dorsal side. The southern group is Central American and has distinct, narrow, black-and-white barring and a greenish sheen on the upper surface of the tail feathers. The northern group (from Mexico and the USA) (the ambiguus group) has fine grayish-and-white marbling and a coppery sheen on the upper tail feathers. Although recognition of the two groups as a single species is based on intermediate patterns described for female and immature birds, they can be distinguished. The ambiguus group has a coppery rather than greenish sheen on upper side of central rectrices (except on goldmani), and middle of wing is more finely and minutely barred than in elegans group. This species needs a more detailed study that compares the various populations with molecular data, given that Dacosta and Klica (2008) recovered genetic diversity in Trogon that exceeds the perceived biodiversity. They also found that the genus likely originated in Central America.
In his 1862 Illustrations, Cassin (1862) speculated that the trogon would eventually be found within the USA. Scott (1886) recognized the presence of a trogon in the Catalina Mountains. A laborer described a bird he had seen only a few hours before, which he believed “was a kind of bird of paradise.” He said it was tame, allowing him to approach closely. He said it, “Had a very long brilliant tail and was bright pink on the breast.” This was on September 20, 1884, and about a mile from my house. Subsequently, two other men saw the same or a similar bird.
Spencer F. Baird’s 1858 book Birds noted the National Museum had four specimens of Trogon elegans from Neuvo Leon Mexico. In Robert Ridgeway’s (1880) catalog of birds he considered trogons extralimital to the US and are found only south of the Rio Grande. Ridgeway listed the identical specimens reported by Baird.
On August 24, 1885, Lt H. C. Benson, of the 4th Calvary was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and shot a young male Trogon in the Huachuca Mountains. Benson sent the bird to the National Museum, and Robert Ridgeway (1887), the curator of the National Museum’s bird collection, recognized that the trogon was in its first plumage. The nestling plumage of this trogon had not been previously published. Now, there was evidence of a breeding population in the USA. In 1891, a Mr. Lusk, a resident of Ramsey Canyon, observed the species on June 9th.
Fowler (1903) recounted observing trogons. On June 9, 1892, Flower described a trip into Gardner Canyon in the Santa Rita’s. He and his father accompanied Dr. A. K. Fisher. Horse riding through a pine-oak forest, a male trogon flew across the path and perched upon an oak on the other side of a stream. On the same day, they saw and heard several other Trogons at higher elevations. Also, In 1892, Dr. E. A. Mearns shot several trogons in the San Luis Mountains in southwestern New Mexico. However, Swarth (1914) still considered the trogon a rare and irregular visitor to southern Arizona.
