Speaking of which, I'd like to share a little bit about the resplendent quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala and the head honcho of El Refugio del Quetzal. As May comes to an end, so to does the quetzal nesting season, which is the best time of year to see these otherwise elusive birds. Quetzals nest from January to May in sub-tropical rainforests at an altitude of around 1,700 meters (in America, that's about 5,500 feet). Unlike the non-industrious jays or sparrows, quetzals laboriously dig away at dead tree trunks to form their nests inside the trunk of the tree. Why dead trees you ask? Great question. The wood of dead trees is softer and easier for the quetzals to pick-at with their beaks. However, one of the reasons quetzal numbers are down worldwide, apart from human-induced deforestation and habitat destruction, is that the dead trees they need to be able to nest have very weak root strength, causing them to fall easily during rainy season when as much as seven meters of rain can fall in six months. When completed, the nest has a circular opening with a diameter of about four inches and a depth of about one foot. Here's a photo from our park of a male quetzal digging his digs.
The female quetzal lays two baby blue eggs, which the male and female take turns incubating for eighteen days (it's a very progressive bird). This is the best time to view quetzals because you can go to where you know the quetzals are nesting and wait for them to switch turns incubating, providing great chances to see them fly in and out of the nest.
After the incubation period, the male and female take turns searching for food to feed their young (again, progressive). Worms and small lizards are the food of choice for baby quetzals who demand a higher protein content in their diet. When they don't want to put in the effort of going out and preparing food for their kids, like most parents the quetzals resort to giving their children microwavable dinners or macaroni-and-cheese. Here is a photo of a baby quetzal from our park that I took last Monday.
From this point, the quetzals leave the nest with their two (usually) chicks and head-up to higher altitudes where they remain until the following nesting season. It's tough to see quetzals outside of nesting season because they don't have a good defense mechanism (no big talons, no big/strong beak, not particularly agile, etc.), so they keep quiet in the canopies of trees and only leave in search for food to avoid attracting the attention of potential predators (hawks). When something does shake-down between a quetzal and a predator, quetzals use strength in numbers to swarm the predator to fend it off. My counterpart says he has seen this before in our park, but I have yet to witness a swarm of green quetzals beating-up on a hawk.
Overall, we had a successful nesting season this year in my park. Our artificial nests attracted two pairs of quetzals and we estimated having about seven or eight pairs over the course of four months, which - for a park our size - are very good numbers. We invited biologists from Germany to view and research the quetzal's "display flight" (the male's way of attracting the female), we inventoried all of the birds in our park (around 110 different species), and we finished the basic infrastructure after a year of work.
