These birds are found in Mexico, but a few of them make their way up into Madera Canyon to nest in the spring. Birders from around the world come to Madera Canyon to see the Elegant Trogan, and it's considered a "lifer" if you see it (aka a bird that one can put on their life list that is a major accomplishment for a birder). Even though they are not altogether rare in their native land of South American, they're a big deal to see here in the United States, and many hardcore birders make pilgrimages to Madera Canyon just to see one.
The morning of our last data collection outing, Jen (one of the other TAs) had gone on a hike to see the nesting area of one known male Elegant Trogan that was in the area. She climbed a mile up steep, rocky terrain to find him perched on top of a dead stump, perfectly situated for pictures. She'd luckily brought along her nice camera, so she took several photos before a dumbass from South Dakota screamed to his wife that he had found the bird, prompting it to take off. I was absolutely astounded when she told me later that she had seen the Elegant Trogan. It's a prize for any birder, a sign that one is serious about the sport and almost like star power in Mario: it makes you invincible. Just kidding, I'm overreacting, but it is really cool and many hardcore birders will get pissed if you joke about something as serious as seeing an Elegant Trogan if you have never actually seen one before (I learned this the hard way two years ago when I jokingly told two psycho birders that I'd seen an Elegant Trogan in the tree I was looking at. They berated me and stared me down icily when they discovered it was just a Brown Crested Flycatcher). I was determined to also see the Elegant Trogan while I was in Arizona.
The next morning I opted to sleep in instead of wake up with the rest of the group and hike up the mountain. I felt a little angry with myself for doing that, especially when I found out that all ten of my compatriots had seen the male and female just ten minutes up the canyon. I begged Scott (the other TA) to take me the next morning (he basically had to drive me everywhere because I can't drive the school vans until I'm 21, thus making me feel like an infant or an incredibly elderly person). He agreed. Unfortunately, that night we stayed up until midnight drinking beers, so we literally felt like we were dying the next morning as we dragged ourselves out of bed at five AM. Scott muttered something about setting Jen's laptop (whose desktop background was her picture of the Trogan) on a stump in order to placate me so we could pretend that we'd seen the Trogan and instead go back to bed. We did eventually get out to the van and we made our way to Madera Canyon.
Twenty minutes later, we were hiking up the trail with the directions Jen had given us implanted fuzzily in our minds ("Go up straight for about a mile, but at some point the trail will take a hard left...but don't go up that way, just keep going straight. You're going to see a couple of big rocks, but not BIG, BIG rocks, so don't waste your time until you see this HUGE rock and that is the one that the Trogan is nesting by. Oh don't worry, you'll find it.") We hiked in silence until, about half a mile up, we saw a group of old men gathered around a grizzly, bearded fellow with an Indiana Jones hat on. This was clearly the old men's birding guide, and they were also looking for the Trogan. For a moment we stopped, sure that the reason the group in front of us had stopped was because they'd seen the Trogan. Our hopes that our hike had been cut short were shot, however, because they had simply stopped to rest. We continued on.
I struggled up the remaining mile (I am embarrassingly out of shape, at the moment) and finally we reached what looked like the large rock Jen had told us about. We examined every stump we could find around it, hoping to see where the female might have built her nest. We could not find it. Suddenly, we heard what sounded like the distant bark of a toy poodle up the canyon. It was the Trogan. Scott and I glanced at each other, wondering if we should hike up the canyon or if we should stay put. The Trogan call sounded again, farther away this time.
For two minutes, I was the most upset girl in the world. I was angry with myself for not having gotten up the previous morning to see the Trogan with everybody else, and for having gotten up so early this particular morning for what seemed like nothing. We sat down, hoping that maybe the Trogan would return to his nest. The group of older men joined us at this point, their guide informing us that it sounded like the Trogan was getting closer. Just as we struck up a small conversation with them about our field work, the male flew into view.
They are amazingly colored. Males have a bright, cherry-red breast with a small white line separating the upper and lower halves. Their backs are a deep evergreen, and their beaks are bright yellow. They look really Christmasy. The bottoms of their tails have a really cool barring pattern. Basically it was amazing. He gave us a spectacular frontal view for a brief few seconds and then swooped to his nesting cavity (which we'd totally missed in our previous search) and then spent a couple of minutes calling for any females in the surrounding area to join him at his bachelor pad. My favorite moment was when he popped into his cavity so he was out of sight, but he kept calling to his lady friends. It made it sound like his call was echoing. The persistence of his calls worked for a second, a female swooped into join him. She was tan instead of the deep emerald of the male, and only stayed for a minute before rejecting him to find another male. After this, he stopped calling so persistently and instead flew to a branch in a tree just below his cavity. He stayed there for the rest of our time in the upper reaches of the canyon, allowing us to drink in his presence. One of the old men, clearly bursting with happiness, said that he was full of pride at having the will to continue his hike, despite his desire to turn back due to fatigue, so that he could see the Elegant Trogan. Scott and I were both touched by this and kept talking about how cute the old men were and how we wanted to take them home. They were all so adorable and excited about seeing the Trogan. The guide shared interesting information with us (though I'm having trouble remembering what exactly it was...) and kept calling the Trogan the Trog-awn. It was strange.
Eventually, it had been twenty minutes and the Trogan was still there. The guide said, "It's a good day when you can turn your back on a Trogan", which we did and started to hike back down the canyon. I'm so glad we got to see it, it was an amazing experience. Plus, it's cool to have done something at age twenty that some people wait their entire lives to do. I'm really grateful that Scott took the time to take me to see the Trogan, because even though he claims it's just so he can rub it in one of our other grad student's faces (which is also probably true), I know he also did it to make me happy.
I have other stories to share from Arizona, specifically two other larger tales and then a post full of short stores/comics. I'm still waiting on pictures for those, however, so in the meantime I will ruin it all by saying that I spent all day today analyzing the data I was collecting in Arizona and, unfortunately, it looks like nothing significant is going on. So that means it is probably not publishable. We'll do one last test to see if we can glean something from it, but mostly it is just not enough data. I'm not sorry though, I still learned a ton about field work, science, and myself. I changed in Arizona, not a lot, but enough. And I hope that it won't dissipate.
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