Gartered Violaceous Trogon

Identificazione

Most trogons have distinctive male and female plumages, with soft, often colorful, feathers. The gartered trogon is 23 to 25 cm (9.1 to 9.8 in) long and weighs 38 to 57 g (1.3 to 2.0 oz). The nominate male's head, neck, and upper breast are a violet-blue. The face and throat are black with a pale yellow ring around the eye. A narrow white band separates the upper breast from the bright yellow lower breast and belly. The upperparts are metallic green. The tail's upperside is violet-blue with black feather tips; the underside has fine black and white bars and broad white feather tips. The wings are mostly black with some whitish inclusions. The female's head and face, upper breast, and upperparts are gray; the eyering is not complete, the belly is a duller yellow than the male's, and the underside of the tail has a different pattern of black and white.<p>T. c. sallaei has a blackish head and upper breast and a blue nape and lower breast. Its upperparts are a yellower green than the nominate's and the upper side of the tail is green. T. c. concinnus is similar to sallaei but its upperparts and tail are bluer.

Tassonomia

Until the early 2000s, what are now the gartered trogon and the Amazonian trogon (T. ramonianus) were considered subspecies of the violaceous trogon (T. violaceous). The International Ornithological Committee (IOC), the Clements taxonomy, and the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society (AOS-SACC) have implemented the split making them separate species and renaming T. violaceous the Guianan trogon. However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) retains them as subspecies. The classification schemes that treat the gartered trogon as a species assign three subspecies, the nominate T. c. caligatus, T. c. sallaei, and T. c. concinnus.

Nome scientifico

Trogon caligatus

Autorità

Gould, 1838

Ordine

Trogoniformes

Famiglia

Trogonidi

Genere

Trogon

Areale e habitat

T. c. sallaei is the northernmost subspecies of gartered trogon. It is found on the Caribbean slope of central Mexico and from the Caribbean and Pacific slopes of southern Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, and El Salvador into northern Honduras and possibly into Nicaragua. T. c. concinnus is found from Costa Rica through most of Panama into western Colombia, and separately from western Ecuador into northwestern Peru. The nominate T. c. caligatus is found from the Caribbean slope of Panama's Darién Province through northern Colombia into western Venezuela. It is a year round resident in Mexico but its movements elsewhere, if any, are unknown.<p>The gartered trogon is generally a bird of semi-open landscapes such as forest edges, clearings, gallery forest, secondary forest, and shaded coffee and cacao plantations. In Mexico it is also found in denser evergreen forest and rainforest. In elevation it ranges as high as 1,400 m (4,600 ft) in Central America but is generally more common in lowlands.

Comportamento

Questo trogone raccoglie solitamente frutti e invertebrati dalla vegetazione restando sospeso in volo. La sua dieta comprende una quantità di frutta maggiore rispetto a quella di molti altri trogoni, ma anche numerosi tipi di insetti e altri invertebrati. Talvolta si unisce a gruppi misti in alimentazione.<p>La stagione riproduttiva va da marzo a giugno in Messico, da maggio a luglio in El Salvador e da febbraio a giugno in Costa Rica. Nidifica in nidi arboricoli di vespe, formiche o termiti, oppure in cavità di alberi marcescenti; la covata comprende solitamente due o tre uova.<p>Il canto è «una lunga serie di rapide note cave, con andamento discendente, kyu-kyu-kyu-kyu-kyu-kyu». Emette anche un richiamo «gorgogliante e chiacchierante».