984 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
the nestlings were sluggish in taking what their father offered them. 
When hungry, they would appear in the doorway and snatch the food 
in a trice; but when satiated they remained in the bottom of the 
chamber, making a low sizzling noise as nourishment was presented 
to them. Then the male would enter and coax them to swallow what 
he had brought. But even when he went inside, he was not always 
successful in delivering the morsel. He would emerge, fly to a neigh- 
boring tree, and rest there, patiently holding the object in his bill : 
for many minutes, while the digestive juices of his nestlings acted 
upon earlier contributions. After a while he would go again to the 
nest with the same article of food, and at length when the nestlings’ 
hunger had reasserted itself, he would succeed in giving it to one 
of them. 
Perhaps it will be of interest to record here the food of the two 19- 
day-old quetzals. From 6 to 9 o’clock on the morning of July 30, 1938, 
the male brought them the following in sequence: a big green fruit 
brought in his bill, and another in his throat; a small lizard; a small 
lizard; a big green fruit in the bill and another in the throat; an 
unrecognized object, which the nestlings were very sluggish in tak- 
ing; a lizard; and a larva. After delivering the last item, he regurgi- 
tated a fruit, which he offered repeatedly over a period of 20 minutes 
before a nestling found room for it. 
Altogether, the diet of the young quetzals, which reflected that of 
their parents, was surprisingly varied. The edible objects I saw taken 
into this and other nests included; insects of numerous kinds, often 
green and of fair size, the most easily recognized of which were the 
golden beetle (Plusiotis aurigans) and even more numerous greenish- 
gold beetles of somewhat larger size (P. bowcardi) [for the identifi- 
cation of these beetles I am indebted to C. H. Lankester]; green 
larvae; small green and yellow frogs; small lizards; small land snails, 
the regurgitated shells of which were found in the bottom of the 
nest; the hard, big-seeded, green-skinned fruits of the tra rosa 
(Ocotea pentagona) and other lauraceous trees. These last are struc- 
turally similar to the avocado but of course are very much smaller. 
They became increasingly prominent in the diet as the nestlings 
grew older. Other trogons I have studied brought few or no fruits to 
their nestlings; this was true even of the Baird’s trogon whose off- 
spring lingered in the nest longer than these two quetzals. Yet the 
adults of most species include at least some fruit in their diet. 
The feeding of the young quetzals by their father alone during 
their last days in the nest is not without parallel in my experience 
with trogons. Last year, a male Baird’s trogon seemed to be in sole 
charge of the nestlings from the time they were a few days old. One 
perished early; but the second lived to fly from the nest, practically 
