In 1937, a collection of quetzal birds arrived at the London Zoo. The quetzal or resplendent trogon belongs to " group of birds (the irogons) which once had a considerably wider distribution than it now enjoys, At one time trogons were found in almost every part of the world (there are fossil records from France), but today they are restricted to Africa and the East and to the tropical parts of Central and South America, Until recently few members of the family had been in captivity beyond such birds as the Cuban trogon, a handsome creature but a very sluggish and rather dull inhabitant of an aviary. No serious effort had ever been made by any zoos to acquire the rarer and more spectacular members of the group, far less to collect specimens of the king of all the trogons, the sacred quetzal bird of the tees and' Mayas, The quetzal has quite a large distribution through Guatemala and other states of Central America, It is a forest living bird, haunting the canopy—for in no other parts of the forest would a full plumaged male be able to fly. This can be realized when the length of the male's tail feathers is considered, When fully developed they are. as long as his body, and his total length may be very nearly three feet, The colour of his plumage is almost entirely metallic green, the green colour extending from his halo-like crest to the tip of his tail. On the belly he is of a subtle shade of red, The female is by no means so spectacular, though still handsome, Her plumage is a combination of greens, olives and buffs, In the summer of 1937 the Honduras expedition set out under the auspices of the Museum of the American Indian in New York, The leader of it was Dr, Wolfgang von Hagen, and it was his determination to secure the first living specimens of quetzals to be exhibited in captivity, After much tedious and unpleasant travelling through the precipitous mountains clad with damp rain-forests that compose most of Honduras, he succeeded in arriving in a district where he was able to find ten quetzal's nests, and keep them under Observation. The eggs in each nest were only two in number, and his expedition waited until the birds had hatched their eggs and brought their young nearly to the fodgeling stage,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.