FAMILY TROGONIDAE 385 



Costa Rica. He found the breeding season, during which two broods 

 were reared, to come from early April to August. The second family 

 was reared in the same nest as the first, where this was possible. 

 Old holes of the larger woodpeckers may be used, or male and female, 

 working alternately, may excavate a nest hole in decaying wood. Two 

 eggs appear to be the normal set. These are laid on the floor of the 

 cavity without nest lining. One egg that he examined measured 

 38.9x30.2 mm. Both male and female incubate, the male during 

 part of the forenoon and afternoon, the female at night and in the 

 middle of the day. In this duty the male as he enters turns around to 

 face the nest opening so that the long tail plumes are curled around, 

 usually with several inches of the tips projecting outside the hole. 

 This in spite of country tradition, cited by Skutch (and that I have 

 heard on various occasions) that the male faces the back of the hole 

 with the tail plumes outside. Incubation required 17 to 18 days. At 

 hatching the young are naked, without down, and with the heel of the 

 tarsus studded with protruding papillae. 



For the first 10 days the young were fed on insects, and then 

 were given the usual diet of fruits mixed with land snails, small 

 lizards, frogs, and large insects. Large seeds regurgitated following 

 digestion accumulated in the nest in quantity as the young grew. 

 Coleopterists may be interested to learn that the golden scarabaeid 

 beetle (Plusiotis), sought by collectors, is recorded as one of the 

 food items. 



Skutch (loc. cit., p. 222) wrote of one nest that the eggs are 

 "light blue in color." Schonwetter (Handb. Ool., pt. 11, 1966, p. 684) 

 recorded the color as "blaugriin bis mehr blau." One in the U. S. 

 National Museum collected by Jose Zeledon at La Palma, Costa Rica, 

 March 15, 1877, is slightly more bluish than the light mineral gray of 

 Ridgway's Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. It measures 

 37.8x29.1 mm. 



The northern race of the species, Pharomachras mocinno mocinno, 

 found from northern Nicaragua through Guatemala to Chiapas, 

 differs in being slightly larger (male, wing usually 204-218 mm., tail 

 197-215 mm.), with the elongated plumes nearly twice as broad, 

 averaging longer (650-957 mm.) and more golden green. Ridgway 

 remarked (U. S. Nat. Mus. Bull. 50, pt. 5, 1911, p. 739) that the 

 longest supracaudal plume in one lot of 100 P. m. costaricensis was 

 only 774.5 mm., and in an additional group of 77 was 787 mm. He 

 noted also that in the entire series none of the plumes were as wide 

 as in the typical subspecies. 



