Lattice-tailed Trogon

How to find it

Start with the right habitat: wet, mossy foothill forest on the Caribbean slope, not lowland rainforest. Braulio Carrillo National Park is named as the most reliable place, though one tour site calls the bird very hard to find. The park is dense, lush forest where birds are hard to spot without a professional birding guide, so a guided hike is recommended. It has ranger-station access and a series of hiking trails, and the target trogons there include Lattice-tailed, Slaty-tailed and Black-throated. Listen for the long run of clucking notes before you search the middle levels of the forest.

How to recognise it

This is a large trogon, about 30 cm long. The male has a yellow bill, a white eye with no eye-ring, a black face and throat, and an iridescent green head, chest and back. His belly is red.

The undertail is black with very fine white bars, the lattice that gives the bird its name. His wing coverts are finely vermiculated with black and white, which gives the wing a gray look.

The female is quite different. Her head, chest and upperparts are slaty gray, the lower chest is olive-brown and the belly is pale pink. Her upper bill has a broad black stripe, and the rest of the bill is yellow.

Behaviour and diet

The Lattice-tailed Trogon is usually solitary except in the breeding season. It drops into the high understory to feed, taking fruit from several laurel-family trees and other fruits. It also eats large insects and sometimes small frogs and lizards.

It nests in a cavity in a rotting trunk or branch, sometimes in an arboreal termite nest, 5 to 8 m up. Breeding runs from February to May. In courtship both sexes give sharp, high cries and raise their tails, and the male crosses his outer tail feathers so the central ones are hidden.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica this trogon lives in the lower canopy and middle levels of very wet foothill forest. It sometimes comes to forest edges or partly cleared areas. It is known to breed between 90 and 1,100 m, and it does not go far into the lowlands.

It is found along the Caribbean slope for the whole length of the country. A natural history account lists the conservation areas of Amistad Caribe, Arenal, Cordillera Volcanica Central, Huetar Norte, Guanacaste, Amistad Pacifico and Tortuguero, and says it ranges north at least to Volcan Miravalles.

When to see it

After breeding, birds move down from the upper part of their range, from the middle to the end of the rainy season. Some move into the lowlands then.

Similar birds

Slaty-tailed Trogon is the main look-alike, another large red-bellied trogon. Tell them apart by voice and by eye and bill color: Lattice-tailed has a white eye and a yellow bill. Slaty-tailed has a plain dark gray tail with no pattern, while ours is finely barred with white underneath. Slaty-tailed is the trogon of lowland rainforest and is often found by its series of deep croaks from tall trees, while Lattice-tailed takes its place in the wet foothills.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Costa Rican Spanish name is Trogón Ojiblanco, meaning white-eyed trogon. Other Spanish names listed are surucuá de cola bordada, trogón colibarrado and trogón colirrayado, and Panama uses colirrayado.

Status and conservation

AOCR lists it as a resident endemic (R-END), uncommon to fairly common on the lower slopes and foothills of the Caribbean side, and the IUCN rates it Least Concern.