Elegant Trogons are reliant upon woodpeckers to excavate holes in trees where they place their nests. Female Elegant Trogon, Trogon elegans, 12.5 in.
Since the 1890s, the possibility of seeing a trogon has lured birdwatchers to southern Arizona. With its brilliant metallic colors and odd croaking call, the Elegant Trogon brings an exotic touch to the wooded canyons and streamside sycamores where it lives. Elegant Trogon is the quintessential Arizona bird. He shows grey upperwing coverts. The male has a metallic deep green head, upper breast and back, black face and throat, and red-orange lower breast and belly. The female has a metallic bronze head, upper breast, back, upper tail and upperwing coverts. Jim Burns's remarkable close encounter with an Elegant Trogon, along with how to distinguish male vs. female when it comes to this elegant species. The notes are repeated 5–10 times with a pause before the next set. RARE and local along canyon streams. Mount Wrightson Picnic Area, Madera Canyon, Santa Rita Mountains, Santa Cruz County, Arizona, USA. Elegant Trogon, male, at Madera Canyon in February 2009 by Gary Botello. I was shooting into the bright sky and the angle isn’t the best, but you can see that the female does not have the bright green back that the male does. The female has a metallic bronze head, upper breast, back, upper tail and upperwing coverts. The male elegant trogon has a metallic deep green head, upper breast and back, black face and throat, and red-orange lower breast and belly. She has more of a gray head, chest and back and a belly lightly washed in red. Nests in tree cavities, usually in sycamores. The Elegant Trogon has a white undertail with fine horizontal black barring.

As photographer Jim Burns wrote in our October 2016 issue, the bird is parrot size, about 13 inches long, and sometimes even called a parrot by non-birders.

She shows a dull white upper belly, and a small white vertical stripe behind the eye. Sounds. It has a yellow bill and a white horizontal breast stripe. The male Elegant Trogon has a metallic deep green head, upper breast and back, black face and throat, and red-orange lower breast and belly.
She shows a dull white upper belly, and a small white vertical stripe behind the eye. The Elegant Trogon's song is a hoarse series of downslurred notes sometimes increasing in loudness. Female trogons must defend offspring from other species. The observer who finds one may get to watch it at leisure: rather sluggish, the trogon may sit upright on one perch for several minutes. The calls are generally a long drawn out note or a short series of quick harsh notes.

The song rate of males is generally much greater than females.

The female Elegant Trogon is colored very differently from the male.

The female has a metallic bronze head, upper breast, back, and upper tail. Elegant Trogon Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology Easily recognized by their metallic-green and rose-red colors, as well as their unusual stout-bodied, square-tailed profile, Elegant Trogons are a prized sighting for birders who visit southeastern Arizona. He shows grey upperwing coverts. ©bryanjsmith. This photo was taken when we first saw her before the male arrived.