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  Profile

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  In flight

Trogons & Quetzals

Elegant Trogon

Trogon elegans

• rare
• 38 km/h
• Least Concern

Arizona birders drive hours for a glimpse. Red belly, emerald back, and a voice like a slow bark.

Population

Not quantified; BirdLife/IUCN state the population size is unlikely to be small given range size and reporting frequency, but the species is undergoing a moderate/suspected decline (1-15% over three generations, driven partly by ~8.6% forest loss across its range 2009-2020)

Habitat

Subtropical and tropical dry to moist forest and forest edge (also dry arid woodlands, pine and deciduous forest, canyon riparian vegetation in the northern part of the historic range), from lowlands up to roughly 1,900 m elevation

Fun fact

Ornithologists split the historic "Elegant Trogon" taxon in 2025, restricting the Elegant Trogon name to Central American populations (Guatemala south to Costa Rica) while the Arizona/Mexico populations became the separate Coppery-tailed Trogon (Trogon ambiguus) — BirdLife/HBW taxonomy had already treated them as split since 2014, but mainstream checklists caught up in 2025.

Range

Central America — following the split of the historic "Elegant Trogon" complex into Trogon elegans (sensu stricto) and Trogon ambiguus (Coppery-tailed Trogon), the current Elegant Trogon (T. elegans) is resident from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua south to Costa Rica; Trogon ambiguus covers the northern populations from Arizona to southern Mexico

Diet

Omnivorous: insects (grasshoppers, mantids, caterpillars, moths, beetles), small lizards, and fruit such as wild figs, chokecherry and buckthorn

Size

0.29 m

Wingspan

0.4 m

Lifespan

6 years