Scarlet-rumped Trogon

Scarlet-rumped Trogon, or the trogon of Duvaucel, owes its name to Alfred Duvaucel, a French naturalist (1793-1824) who travelled to India from 1817 until his death in Madras. Conrad Jacob Temminck, a Dutch ornithologist (1778-1858), catalogued Harpactes duvaucelii and gave it this name in honour of Alfred Duvaucel's work. Measuring 23 to 24 cm, this Scarlet-rumped Trogon is among the smaller trogonids, with a black head, cap, nape and throat, a sky-blue beak with a black tip, and a broad sky-blue eyebrow. The distinctive markings continue with a scarlet chest and belly; the mantle and upper back are cinnamon-brown in colour; and the rump holds onto the scarlet hue of the belly. The black coverts are finely flecked with vagues of white, and the black tail feathers have thin white margins. The upper central retrices are cinnamon-brown barred with black at their extremity, with the external retrices being black but scarcely visible. The lower retrices are white, lightly horizontally striped with black in the middle, and as the bird spreads out its retrices they will expose their black upper external retrices, the tail becoming entirely black in the centre and white on the outside. Female Scarlet-rumped Trogon has a olive-brown head, differing from female cinnamon trogon who has a rufous eye frame and parotid, a buff-pink breast which turns into an orange-red belly, a very light chestnut-brown mantle and back which takes on a pinkish hue on the rump; and its dark brown coverts with large buff-pink horizontal vermiculations.The upper central tail feathers are reddish-brown while the lower white tail feathers are black-gray at their base. The tarses have a bluish-gray coloration. Juveniles have a general light brown coloration, the coverts have coarse vermiculations, the young males in particular, do not yet have the fineness of adults.