All species › Trogons › Trogons › White-tailed Trogon
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White-tailed Trogon | Trogon chionurus
Witstaarttrogon | Trogón coliblanco
The White-tailed Trogon is a yellow-bellied trogon of humid lowland forest in central and eastern Panama and the Chocó region of Colombia and Ecuador. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of the Amazonian Green-backed Trogon Trogon viridis. The name refers to the almost entirely white underside of the tail in the male.
Voice
A long series of clear kow or chew notes that starts slowly and then accelerates, longer and often slightly lower than in Gartered Trogon. Also a soft clucking chak.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
26–28 cm. The male has a blue-black head and breast with a violet gloss, a pale blue bare eye-ring, a blue-grey bill, a green to blue-green back and an orange-yellow belly. The underside of the tail is almost entirely white. The female is grey on the head, breast and back, with a yellow belly, a broken white eye-ring and an undertail with black bars at the base and broad white tips.
Confusion species
Gartered Trogon Trogon caligatus is smaller, has a yellow eye-ring and, in the male, a finely barred black-and-white undertail. Male Graceful Black-throated Trogon Trogon tenellus has a green head and back and a yellow eye-ring.
Habitat
Humid lowland and foothill forest, Chocó rainforest, tall secondary forest and forest edges, up to about 900 m. It sits still for long periods in the middle and upper tree layers and eats fruit and insects. It nests in a cavity in an arboreal termite nest or in rotting wood.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area only in Panama: on the Caribbean slope from about Coclé and Colón, and on the Pacific slope from the Panama Canal area eastwards through Panamá province and Darién to the Colombian border. Outside the guide area in western Colombia and north-western Ecuador.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Common along Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto) in Soberanía and in Parque Natural Metropolitano near Panama City. The long, accelerating series is one of the most frequently heard sounds in the forest of the Panama Canal.
Conservation status
Not threatened. It tolerates some disturbance and also occurs in tall secondary forest and at forest edges.
Scientific name
Trogon chionurus | Sclater & Salvin, 1871
Sclater & Salvin described the species in 1871 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Trogon was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Trogon is Greek, from trōgōn 'gnawing, fruit-eating'. chionurus is Greek, from khiōn 'snow' and oura 'tail', after the largely white undertail. The specimen the first description was based on came from Lion Hill, former Canal Zone, Panama.