276 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
cavity that served for the first brood is made to do duty for the second 
after the bottom is cleaned out. When they can find nothing ready 
made, the quetzals appear to carve their cavity from the beginning, in 
soft, decaying wood, in the manner of other trogons. At lower eleva- 
tions, where their range overlaps that of the ivory-billed or pileated 
woodpeckers, the quetzals may find cavities of adequate size all ready 
for them; but over most of their range, they can needy, avoid a certain 
amount bE hole carving. 
The quetzal’s eggs rest upon the loose fragments of wood in the bot- 
tom of the cavity, for no soft lining is taken in. I saw only two sets, 
one in May and the other in June. The eggs in the May nest had been 
broken before I was taken to see them. Feathers scattered about 
pointed to the work of some predatory animal. ‘There had been at 
least two eggs, light blue in color. The one still whole enough to 
be measured was 38.9X30.2 mm. The June nest also contained two 
light blue eggs, which I did not deem it prudent to remove from their 
~ deep, rather dilapidated cavity. In a high, inaccessible nest to which 
I devoted considerable attention, at least two fledglings were reared. 
INCUBATION 
On April 6, 1938, I wrote in my journal: “Two mornings past, I 
saw a female quetzal, then a male (of the pair, I believe, that had 
earlier begun to enlarge the entrance of the old woodpecker hole in 
a neighboring trunk) cling upright in front of a large, round hole at 
the very top of a tall, massive and much decayed trunk which stands 
at the edge of the forest at the lower end of the pasture. The hole 
is to all appearances an old one, the wood about its rim much 
weathered; and I have passed beneath the trunk so often that I think 
I should have seen the quetzals at work had they made it recently. 
Each, after clinging a few seconds there, flew back into the forest. 
“Yesterday morning, when I passed by, I saw the male sitting in the 
cavity. He sat facing outward, with his head and shoulders project- 
ing through the aperture. His tail was at the back of the cavity, but 
one of the long feathers of the train was bent double and projected 
through the entrance, above the bird’s left shoulder. Where, then, is 
the Guatemalan story of the nesting cavity with two entrances, so 
that the male quetzal’s tail can project through the rear one? Or the 
Costa Rican version that the bird sits in the nest head inside and tail 
dangling from the single doorway ? 
“When the quetzal noticed me beneath him, he flew forth from the 
hole. I did not deem it prudent to return later in the day. This 
morning, at 6 o’clock, I saw the female enter the hole; but at 10 o’clock 
it was unoccupied. Apparently the birds have not yet begun to 
incubate.” 
