The male trogon is sallying down to the ground to take large yellow grasshoppers. I have been following him on his rounds for an hour now, keeping a respectful distance, though he pays me no mind as he hunts through the cottonwood forest for breakfast. Right now he is twenty yards out at eye level, sitting on a small branch, scoping nearby willow bushes and the leaf litter beneath his perch. I once described the Elegant Trogon hunting style as “vireo on valium.” They sit for minutes on end turning the head VERY slowly this way, then that, tuning in visually to insects and fruit often perfectly camouflaged to the human eye, then sally out or down and pluck, sometimes hover plucking. The capture is with the bill. I have never seen a trogon come up empty.
This one hasn’t. He drops to the ground again, comes up with his next grasshopper, then flies directly toward me, passing at eye level over my camera lens which is on my tripod. I flinch as he rises to go over me, then pick up the tripod and prepare to follow, camera and lens hanging over my left shoulder, tripod legs extending out horizontally in front of me the way I always carry them. As I turn, he is pulling up to a branch not ten yards away. Inexplicably he loses his grasp on the insect which then falls into the leaf litter at my feet.
The trogon hovers, searching, then lands on the nearest horizontal perch—one of my tripod legs! He is twelve inches from my left hand which is holding the leg he has chosen. He looks at me. I look at him. He looks down for the grasshopper. I try not to breathe. I look around for someone who might verify what no one will ever believe. There is not another human being within two miles. I resume breathing and fumble for my cell phone thinking I might somehow capture this image. The tripod leg is slick compared to tree bark, and my slight movement causes him to slip and rebalance. I stop breathing again and forget the cell phone. He looks down again. I look down. The leaf litter, dead and drying cottonwood and willow leaves, is all light greens, yellows, and browns. I cannot discern the grasshopper but keep looking anyway, ridiculously imagining that if I can pick it out of the forest detritus it will somehow help him find it.
This goes on for fully sixty seconds. Somehow I resist the temptation to reach out and touch him. Finally he spies it, drops to the capture, then flies to the branch he had originally chosen. I breathe again and find I am shaking uncontrollably. No matter, the bird is too close to focus with my 600mm lens anyway.
Elegant Trogon is the quintessential Arizona bird. Two or three times a year I receive emails inquiring how to find this “shy and reclusive” species. I always respectfully answer that the bird is NOT shy and reclusive, but tame and confiding, the difficulty of finding one being simply that there are so few here at this northernmost outpost of their breeding range. Certainly no more than a hundred in any given year, spread out through the canyons of the Sky Islands. And almost all head south for winter.
This one, which I've named “Elvis” in honor of the Velvet Elvis pizza kitchen in the nearby ranching/artisan community of Patagonia, has famously overwintered at LPSP going on twelve years now. I first photographed him in January, 1999 and then wrote him up in an article for the December, 2004 issue of Birders’ World Magazine. Elvis, a male, is red and green of course, and my latest mind boggling encounter with this tame, confiding, and spectacular bird is surely a Christmas gift from the birding gods.