COPPERY-TAILED TROGON 109 



summer and fall and that young birds do not acquire the fully adult 

 jDlumage until they are at least 15 months old, or perhaps much older. 



Food. — Some coppery-tailed trogons that E. C. Jacot collected for 

 me were feeding on wild grapes. Dr. A. K. Fisher wrote to Major 

 Bendire (1895) that "a rancher who raises fruit in Ramsay Canyon 

 stated that the species visited the gardens in considerable numbers, 

 especially during the period when cherries were ripe." Major Ben- 

 dire (1895) says of other members of the trogon; family: "Their food 

 consists of fruit, grasshoppers, and other insects, and in their actions 

 while catching the latter they are said to resemble a Flycatcher, 

 starting and returning from a perch like these birds, and often 

 sitting for hours in the same place." 



Cottam and Knappen (1939) state that a bird, collected by Dr. 

 Fisher in the Huachuca Mountains in June, "had fed exclusively on 

 the adults and larvae of lepidopterous insects." They examined the 

 stomach of another bird, collected in October in Mexico, that con- 

 tained 68 percent insects and 32 percent fruits. The insect food in- 

 cluded one grasshopper nymph, long-horned grasshopper eggs, three 

 Mantidae, three stink bugs, other Heteroptera, one leaf beetle, one 

 very large larva of a hawk moth, larvae of undetermined Lepidoptera, 

 and two sawfly larvae. The vegetable food consisted of fruits of cut- 

 leaved cissus, fruit of red pepper, and undetermined plant fiber. 



Behavior. — F. H. Fowler (1903) writes: 



On June 9, 1802, my father and I accompauiod Dr. A. K. Fisher to Garden 

 Canyon seven miles south of the post. We reached the canyon and were riding 

 up the narrow trail bordered with pines and live oaks, when suddenly a beauti- 

 ful male trogon flew across the path just ahead of us, and perched on a live oak 

 bush on the other side of the small stream which flows through the canyon. 

 The Doctor tried to approach it, but the noise caused by his passage through 

 the thick brush and over the sliding rocks on the hill side alarmed the bird, 

 which from the first had seemed a trifle uneasy, and it was soon lost to view 

 among the trees down the canyon. Higher up among the pines, on the same 

 day, we heard the calls of another which sounded much like those of a hen 

 turkey. While we were eating lunch on the way down, we heard still another 

 calling from the hillside above us, and the Doctor, who found it perched on the 

 lower limb of a pine after a short search, watched its actions for a few moments 

 and then shot at it. It sat erect, the tail hanging straight down, and when utter- 

 ing the call threw its head back imtil its beak pointed nearly straight up. 



On August 14 of the same year I again found the trogon in Garden Canyon, 

 this time higher up however at the Picture Rocks. A beautiful pair flew up 

 from a fallen pine to the lower limb of a tree, and sat there quietly watching 

 me. I dismounted and fired a reduced charge at the male, but the only effect 

 was that he flew off through the trees unhurt, while the female flew up to a 

 small tree on the hill, where she sat, looking at me until I loaded my gun, 

 when I shot her. At the second shot the male flew up the canyon his beautiful 

 carmine breast gleaming in the sunlight like a streak of flame. Both birds sat 

 nearly erect when at rest, with their long tails hanging nearly straight down. 

 Their flight was nearly like the slow flight of a magpie, until startled, when 

 they flew like a dove and nearly as fast. 



