Natural history -- Nicaragua; Nicaragua -- Description and travel
Amongst the smaller birds were trogons, mot-mots, toucans, and
woodpeckers. The trogons are general feeders. I have taken from
their crops the remains of fruits, grasshoppers, beetles, termites,
and even small crabs and land shells. Three species are not
uncommon in the forest around Santo Domingo. In all of them the
females are dull brown or slaty black on the back and neck, these
parts being beautiful bronze green in the males. The largest
species (Trogon massena, Gould) is one foot in length, dark bronze
green above, with the smaller wing feathers speckled white and
black, and the belly of a beautiful carmine. Sometimes it sits on a
branch above where the army ants are foraging below; and when a
grasshopper or other large insect flies up and alights on a leaf,
it darts after it, picks it up, and returns to its perch. I found
them breaking into the nests of the termites with their strong
bills, and eating the large soft-bodied workers; and it was from
the crop of this species that I took the remains of a small crab
and a land shell (Helicina). Of the two smaller species, one
(Trogon atricollis, Vieill.) is bronze green above, with speckled
black and white wings, belly yellow, and under feathers of the tail
white, barred with black. The other (Trogon caligatus, Gould) is
rather smaller, of similar colours, excepting the head, which is
black, and a dark blue collar round the neck. Both species take
short, quick, jerky flights, and are often met with along with
flocks of other birds--fly-catchers, tanagers, creepers,
woodpeckers, etc., that hunt together, traversing the forests in
flocks of hundreds together, belonging to more than a score
different species; so that whilst they are passing over, the trees
seem alive with them. Mr. Bates has mentioned similar gregarious
flocks met with by him in Brazil; and I never went any distance
into the woods around Santo Domingo without seeing them. The reason
of their association together may be partly for protection, as no
rapacious bird or mammal could approach the flock without being
discovered by one or other of them, but the principal reason
appears to be that they play into each other's hands in their
search for food. The creepers and woodpeckers and others drive the
insects out of their hiding-places under bark, amongst moss, and in
withered leaves. The fly-catchers and trogons sit on branches and
fly after the larger insects, the fly-catchers taking them on the
wing, the trogons from off the leaves on which they have settled.
In the breeding season, the trogons are continually calling out to
each other, and are thus easily discovered. They are called "viduas,"
that is, "widows," by the Spaniards.
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