272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
quetzals called much; and it became clear to me that they had a rather 
varied vocabulary, including sounds of rare beauty. They were most 
vocal in calm, cloud-veiled dawns, and late on misty afternoons; in 
bright weather they called less, and on windy days rarely broke 
silence. Their notes reminded me somewhat of the utterances of the 
clearer-voiced of the small trogons, as the Mexican, Jalapa, gartered 
(Trogon violaceus), and graceful (Trogon rufus tenellus), yet were 
quite distinct from any of these. The quetzal’s voice, at its best, is 
softer and at the same time deeper, fuller and more powerful than that 
of any other trogon I know. The notes are not distinctly separated, 
but are slurred and run into each other, producing a flow of mellow 
harmony. Even as the quetzal surpasses his kindred trogons in 
splendor of plumage, so he excels them in mellowness of voice. The 
female, on rare occasions, was heard to utter a clear-voiced call 
resembling that of the male, but in far weaker, more subdued tones. 
At times, especially at the outset of the season of nesting, the 
quetzals voiced notes of a whining, complaining character, which ap- 
peared to be mating calls. I could not then make sure whether both 
sexes used this sound or only one, nor which it was; but I sometimes 
heard it when they were together at the edge of the forest. Later, 
when they were incubating, both male and female would deliver nasal 
or whining notes of a rather similar character as each came to relieve 
the other on the nest. In May I became aware of an utterance very 
distinct from all these, a high, soprano, sliding whooo, not especially 
loud—a surprising performance which, when first heard, I was in- 
clined to attribute to a mammal rather than a bird. 
The flight display of the male quetzal is accompanied by an utter- 
ance all its own that is-obviously a modification of the flight note 
already described. From time to time, in March, April, May, June, 
and July, the male rises on wing well above the treetops, circles 
around in the air, then descends again into the shelter of the foliage. 
His flight on these sallies is strong, swift, and direct, often with little 
of the usual undulatory motion; but if he goes very high, it may at 
the end become pronouncedly wavy and jerky, suggesting that he has 
about reached the limit of his endurance. As he soars up into the air, 
he shouts loudly a phrase which at various times I set down as wace- 
wac, wac-wac, wac-wac, but as often very-good, very-good, very-good. 
On a number of occasions, I saw the male, when relieved of his long 
turn on the eggs by the arrival of his mate, set forth directly from the 
doorway of the nest on one of these flights, calling loudly as he went. 
Such aerial sallies are not rare among birds of open fields and low 
thickets, as the skylark and the bobolink, or, to take closer neighbors of 
the quetzal, Baird’s yellowthroat (Geothlypis semiflava), the streaked 
saltator (Saltator albicollis) and Lawrence’s elaenia (Elaenia chiri- 
