LIFE HISTORY OF THE QUETZAL—SKUTCH 277 
On April 8, the male quetzal was in the nest at 7:40 in the morn- 
ing, but he flew out and rose above the treetops as [approached. That 
same afternoon, at 2: 20, for the first time I found him actually cover- 
ing the eggs. I aproached very quietly so that he did not hear me 
and look out. All that I could see of him was the ends of the two 
long feathers of his train. These, bent forward and pressed against 
the upper edge of the doorway, projected the better part of a foot 
into the open. Had the trunk been covered with epiphytes, as it 
would have been if it had not been too rotten and crumbly on the 
outside to afford them a root-hold, the projecting feathers might have 
been mistaken for the green fronds of a fern. 
On subsequent visits to this and two other nests I found a little later, 
I learned that I could always detect from a distance the presence of 
the male quetzal in the nest by the projecting ends of these two long 
central tail coverts. They extended from 6 inches to a foot into the 
outer air and waved gracefully in the light April breezes. Although 
all the remainder of the bird was quite concealed in the bottom of the 
deep cavity, and I could not actually see the position in which he 
covered the eggs, the visible portions of these plumes indicated that 
he sat facing forward, with his tail held upright against the rear wall. 
This is actually the posture assumed in incubation by the Mexican, 
Jalapa, and graceful trogons, which are readily seen as they sit in their 
shallow cavities. But the male quetzal’s long train continued up- 
ward, then bent outward, and pressed against the upper side of the 
doorway which held the flexed ends in an almost horizontal position. 
It was early evident that both sexes took substantial shares in the 
incubation of the eggs. In order to learn in more detail how they 
divided the day between them, I devoted about 58 hours to watching 
the nests during incubation. Records covering all hours of the day 
were made while my first pair incubated both their first and second 
sets of eggs and while my second pair were hatching out their second 
brood. I usually made continuous vigils of from 5 to 7 hours, begin- 
ning in the middle of the day, watching until nightfall, and when the 
weather was not too adverse, resuming the vigil at the following dawn 
and continuing to the middle of the day. In addition to these long 
records, a number of briefer observations were made in order to 
time the morning and evening nest-relief. Although the first nest 
was high, I watched it from concealment. But the pair at the second, 
low nest gradually grew so accustomed to my presence that they showed 
no concern when I sat quietly beneath a tree in view of them. While 
feeding their nestlings they finally became so tame that I was able 
to photograph them at the nest, at close range, without using any 
form of concealment. 
The records for all three nestings showed substantial similarity in 
the division of the day between the male and female. There was a 
