Behavior and Feather Structure of the Quetzal

T•E first two authors studied the northern subspecies of Quetzal, Pharomachrus mocinno mocinno, during a 3-month expedition to Guatemala in 19'68. Our behavioral data show interesting variations and differences from those Skutch (1944) collected in Costa Rica, 1937-38, on the southern subspecies, P.m. costaricensis. To our knowledge, this is the first reported examination and photographs of Quetzal feathers made under an electron microscope. Little biological information about Quetzals has appeared in the literature, other than two semipopular articles in Audubon (Kern, 1968) and National Geographic (Bowes and Allen, 1969a), and two technical papers on the species' conservation and biology (Skutch, 1944; Bowes and Allen, 1969b).