The Most Beautiful Bird in the World

As a wildlife photographer, as an artist, I find it fascinating what people come to view as beautiful and how differing cultures react to that beauty. The resplendent quetzal is a good example of this. An uncommon bird of the cloud forests across parts of Central America, the quetzal has been called the most beautiful in the world.

For Europeans, this beauty became a thing of high demand in high society. Collectors risked their lives to sail across the ocean, bushwacking their way high into the mountains to shoot and kill and bring home crates of these birds and their feathers. Some would be bound for museums or private displays of curios. Others were bound for hats and fashion, fueling the millinery industry that drove countless species of birds around the world to the brink of extinction or beyond at the time. All in all, it’s the typical story. We find something beautiful, and we demand to possess it no matter the costs.

For the people who lived amongst the quetzals, their experience was somewhat different. The word quetzal is derived from an Aztec word that can be roughly translated to “sacred” or “sacred feathers.” As such, to kill a quetzal was a crime punishable by death for both the Aztecs and the Mayans. But to possess the long feathers of the male quetzal, which can reach a meter in length, was also a thing of great importance due to the major role the species played in these different cultures’ religions. Thus, to obtain the feathers, a quetzal was captured, the tail feathers carefully removed, and the bird released back into the forest.

For the Aztec, the resplendent quetzal was the closest thing on Earth to one of the most important gods in their pantheon: Quetzalcoatl; the god of creation, corn, civilization, and knowledge. The name Quetzalcoatl translates to feathered serpent, which the male resplendent quetzal looks like as he flies through the canopy of the cloud forest with long tail feathers streaming behind him like a giant green snake slithering through the sky.

The Aztec, like many other cultures around the world, believed that the gods periodically destroyed the world for various reasons. Usually, the reasoning was based on a Darth Vader like philosophy of destroying it all so something better could regrow in its place. Quetzalcoatl was no different in this respect. While associated with creation, Quetzalcoatl had also brought about the 5th destruction of the world by sending a great flood. The Aztecs, and other people who inhabited the Earth, were all descendants of the ones chosen to survive, rebuild, and for whom the feathered serpent then taught agriculture and brought civilization to.

Me, I just want to experience these birds; to be in their presence, to find and watch and marvel over the intensity of their colors as they fade in and out of shafts of light in the forest.

Traveling to the cloud forests of Panama in the month of April as I did this year for my workshop meant that quetzal chicks would be hatching and the parents, along with last year’s offspring, would be beginning to hunt almost non-stop to feed their brood.

Timing is everything when it comes to wildlife photography in general. This trip was timed precisely to take advantage of this opportunity. For this reason, the first order of business upon arriving in the mountains was finding and sizing up a variety of nests to determine which were going to be the best to bring workshop participants to.

Resplendent quetzals are cavity nesters. Like many other birds in the forest, they seek out abandoned woodpecker cavities and then modify it all to their needs. While these birds are opportunistic in what they will eat, their ecology is inextricable from that of wild avocados. And for this reason, finding cavities near the wild avocado trees in the forest is always the first step to finding nesting quetzals.

But finding the right quetzal nest to photograph is a completely different story.

It all starts to feel a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears; most are too high, others don’t have an open perch for the male nearby. But eventually you find the one that is just right. This is why we scout. This is why I like to show up a week or two before a workshop.

Such was the case this year. With several quetzal nests identified, it was then a matter of deciphering which one was going to work. What was the general pattern of activity? What was the light like? Background? Etc.

After a few days of putting eyes on birds, it was obvious which nesting cavity I wanted to devote all of my time to. While I had hoped to have a few different nests to photograph, one particular nest had so much potential that I decided to all my efforts into to this one location. That’s not to say all my efforts for the workshop went into this, of course. Coming to the cloud forest is all about diversity. But dialing in the quetzal nests was where all the work beforehand needed to take place.

Quetzals tend to nest high. This is one of the challenges with finding good nests for photography, it’s what eliminates most of the nests in an area. But one of the quetzal nests we located happened to be in a tree that was growing alongside of a creek in a steep ravine that put me at eye level with the cavity from the ridge above.

Adding to this, the beautiful branch in the photo above, covered in moss and bromeliads that just scream “cloud forest,” was a mere 8 feet away from the cavity. This all but ensured that birds would fly in and perch here before jumping to the nesting cavity. And thanks to the ravine that the tree was growing out of, the dense foliage on the other side made for the perfect deep forest background.

The only problem with all this was how close we would be from the nest itself on the ridge. Close is good for wildlife photography. But nesting cavities are sensitive locations. When I arrived on the scene, chicks were just beginning to hatch. For the quetzals, this meant that everything was at stake here. So, keeping the adult quetzals calm and comfortable with our presence was of the upmost importance. And the only way to do this would be to construct blinds to photograph from.

With two large swaths of camouflage netting, a bit of paracord, and a recently sharpened machete, we went to work fashioning a makeshift hide large enough for 3 people to sit behind where clean photos could be created of both the perch and the nesting cavity. The blind was erected in the middle of the day when activity at the nest would be at a minimum. From there, it was a matter of leaving the hide in place for a few days with no human activity around so the birds could acclimate quickly.

Anytime I work from a blind or hide in a sensitive location like this, I always give it a minimum of 3 days before I use it. The animals, of course, immediately recognize the new “thing” in their environment. Situations in the natural world are always changing, however. Trees topple with storms, for instance, and reveal new landscapes and views around them. I have staked down popup blinds in front of fox dens, erected hides in trees in front of nests, and created purpose-built blinds at breeding leks for grouse. When I do, I go in and set up as quickly as possible and at a time of day when there is the least amount of activity. I then vacate the scene entirely and don’t come back till the next morning – but only to observe from afar.

Every animal has an imaginary bubble around them in which they begin to take notice and react to a large predator. Researchers call this the Overt Reaction Distance, or simply the ORD. You may have heard this referred to as the “bear bubble.” It’s what informs the National Park Service, for instance, on how close you are allowed to get to bears. Every animal is different. Even the same species but in different habitats can be different in terms of their ORD. A grizzly in Yellowstone National Park leads a pretty hard scrabble life, where food is scarce, and survival is hard. For that reason, their ORD tends to be around 100 yards. Outside of this, they pay little attention to you. Inside of this, and they begin to react in some fashion. A coastal brown bear, which is technically the same species as the grizzly but live in a place with a whole lot more food, has an ORD of around 15 yards.

The trick is to observe and recognize what your animal’s ORD is. Stay outside of this, and you can watch all day long with a set of field glasses without worry of any negative impact. Go inside of this, and you begin to adjust their behavior to some degree.

This is ultimately where blinds / hides come into play with animals. Some species have an ORD that is too great in relation to their size for use to photograph without inturrpting, chasing them away, or having some sort of negative impact on them. At other times, it’s not the species but the situations that changes all of this. A lek where sage grouse converge to dance the night away in hopes of winning the hearts and minds of a mate is a very sensitive situation where the slightest movement can flush a hundred birds or more. And with a resplendent quetzal, who is worried about leading predators to their nests where offspring will be easy pickings, the adults will delay feeding their young for many hours so as to not “show” you exactly where their chicks are.

So, I use hides to both put animals at ease in various situations to create photographs of them. And to ensure I don’t add too much pressure at once, I never attempt to actually work from the blind until at least the third day of it being in place.

Given the lag time between identifying the right nest, getting the blind in place, ensuring the behavior of the quetzals were not being altered by its presence, and then having the travel back to the city to meet clients who were flying in, over a week had gone by and I had not yet had the opportunity to use the blind myself.

Because the hide was barely large enough for three people work from, I could only put half of the group in front of the cavity at once – and certainly never with me in there as well. For this reason, I rotated folks out for morning and afternoon shifts and left one of my local guides and a powerful handheld radio for communication nearby. As for the other half of the group, we worked on multi-flash hummingbird setups or photographed some of the other rare endemic species of birds from other purpose-built blinds about a kilometer away.

With a week and a half of work before hand, another 7 days of boots on the ground for the workshop, everyone was going home with beautiful frame filling photos of resplendent quetzals. Everyone, that is, except for me.

After so much work to get the “perfect” quetzal nest dialed in, after spending the next week seeing the amazing photographs my clients were producing from the blind, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Panama without getting at least a little piece of the action myself. So, I did what any sensible wildlife photographer would do: I changed all of my flights, rented another diesel Land Cruiser, and extended my trip an extra week.

And oh boy, I sure am glad that I did!

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