Elegant Trogon

It has been a couple of weeks since I last posted about the young Owlet. The Great Horned Owl family has now moved on. Presumably the adults are showing the young one the neighborhood.

In the meantime, we've been able to get away a few times to do some hiking/birding -- and, of course, photography.

Yesterday, we went with "former guests" (who have now moved to Tucson) to Madera Canyon. They had never seen (or heard) an Elegant Trogon. So that was the main goal of the day. While it took an hour and a half, we finally came across a very cooperative male Elegant Trogon.

I have seen and photographed them in the Chiricahua, Huachuca, and Santa Rita Mountains -- which are about the only places in the US where they can be found.

I have a couple of photos from yesterday that I want to show starting with this view:

What is interesting to me is the color of the back in this view. It is clearly blue! The head and nape are clearly green, as are the scapulars. Not having handled either a live or dead bird I had never noticed blue on an Elegant Trogon.  I consulted the many bird journals and found no mention of blue.

However, I found an interesting article on the coloration of bird feathers in the Cornell Lab Bird Academy. 

"The colors in the feathers of a bird are formed in two different ways, from either pigments or from light refraction caused by the structure of the feather. In some cases feather colors are the result of a combination of pigment and structural colors. The greens of some parrots are the result of yellow pigments overlying the blue-reflecting characteristic of the feathers."

There are three types of Pigmentation: Carotenoids, Melanins, and Porphyrins. These are substances in birds (plants, animals) that are in fact a specific color. A Cardinal for example has red pigmentation.

Structural Colorations are caused by light as it is refracted by the proteins in the feathers. The two types are Iridescent Feathers and Non-Iridescent Feathers. The most obvious example of Iridescent Feathers is the gorget of hummingbirds. And the most obvious example in hummingbirds on our property is Anna's Hummingbird whereby the crown and gorget can look "black" until the sunlight hits them and the red becomes striking. 

This brings us back to the Elegant Trogon that may well fit in that category of "... the greens of some parrots are the result of yellow pigments overlying the blue-reflecting characteristic of the feathers."

I am curious as to how often other birders have seen this blue coloration.

Here is a frontal view of this very cooperative Elegant Trogon yesterday in Madera Canyon: