Arizona Surveys Find a Record-Low Number of Elegant Trogons, Raising Concerns About Drought Impacts

On a cool spring morning, quickly after the solar’s rays illuminate a deep, wooded canyon in southern Arizona, almost two dozen individuals sporting binoculars embark on a chase for a shocking, secretive chook.

Their aim is to glimpse the sensible multihued plumage of the Elegant Trogon. From round April to September, the exotic-looking chook’s distinctive croaking name reverberates via the area’s oak- and sycamore-forested canyons. For birders, it’s among the many nation’s most coveted species. “They’re large. They’re fairly,” says Dara Vazquez, whereas looking out Madera Canyon within the Santa Rita Mountains. Including to the enchantment, they’re an area specialty; apart from a handful of birds in a sliver of New Mexico, southeastern Arizona is the trogon’s solely U.S. breeding stronghold. “So that they’re unique in that method,” Vazquez says.

Individuals on this day’s search, nonetheless, have the next goal than notching a brand new lifer. They’ve volunteered for a set of surveys performed every Might by the Tucson Bird Alliance, an Audubon chapter, which might be serving to make clear the abundance and whereabouts of the species in Arizona. This 12 months’s complete rely turned out to be the bottom since surveys started of their present kind greater than a decade in the past, including to issues in regards to the potential influence of a lingering drought on the species on the northern excessive of its habitat.

The Elegant Trogon is extra generally discovered within the tropical mountains of Mexico and Central America and was first noticed in Arizona within the Eighties. Since then the species has slowly expanded its footprint within the state’s portion of the Madrean Sky Islands, biodiversity-rich mountain ranges that rise from desert scrubland to forested peaks on either side of the worldwide border. Elegant Trogons keep put all 12 months in most of their vary, however birds from northern Mexico migrate every spring to 5 sky-island ranges the place a comparatively small inhabitants is understood to nest, favoring tree cavities created by woodpeckers close to water.

Tucson Fowl Alliance conducts surveys in all 5 of those ranges. For the Santa Rita rely, Vazquez and one other volunteer, Jelena Grbic, drove some 150 miles south from the Phoenix space and camped in a single day. Marie Davis, who lives in close by Tucson, joins them as they start their search on a Sunday morning. Gusty winds unfold an earthy scent within the coronary heart of the canyon and brittle leaves susurrate underfoot because the trio explores close to a dry stream.

The desiccated leaves trace at how dry issues have been right here not too long ago, even by this arid area’s requirements. Earlier than launching the surveys, biologist Jennie MacFarland, the nonprofit’s director of chook conservation, fearful in regards to the impact of parched circumstances—half of a bigger dry interval afflicting the Southwest—on trogons. Since they started in 2013, the surveys have discovered that years with a weak summer season monsoon are usually adopted by years with fewer trogons. “There’s a robust correlation between how a lot rainfall has come the 12 months earlier than and what number of trogons there are,” she says.

Given the area’s below-normal monsoon rainfall in 2024, MacFarland figured this 12 months’s surveys may yield a decrease variety of birds. Nonetheless, she was stunned that volunteers discovered simply 31 trogons over three weekends in 5 places—lower than half the earlier low of 68 in 2021. On common, the surveys report 136 trogons a 12 months, MacFarland says.

That’s to not say the species is in bother. Some estimates put the full Elegant Trogon inhabitants round 200,000 people, and BirdLife Worldwide considers it a species of least concern. MacFarland attributes this spring’s low rely to not an general inhabitants lower, however reasonably to fewer birds migrating to Arizona due to the diminishing moisture. With scant rain previously 12 months to foster progress, the normally plentiful wildflowers in canyons, together with the bugs that trogons depend on for sustenance, are scarce.

Though grownup trogons additionally eat fruit, “the chicks want bugs,” MacFarland says. “They usually should be massive bugs, like strolling sticks, katydids, massive grasshoppers, cicadas. If we’re having a extremely dry 12 months, they’re simply not round in good numbers.”

Low numbers usually are not what MacFarland hoped for, however she says they’re nonetheless essential to doc. The surveys additionally discovered extra males than females and confirmed them venturing out past their normally small vary, she says, most likely searching for habitat with extra moisture and meals.

Extra trogons might arrive later in the summertime with the projected heavy rains of a robust monsoon, she says—one thing that anecdotal stories counsel has occurred earlier than. For the primary time, MacFarland is planning one other spherical of surveys in July to see if it bears out.

If the Arizona inhabitants rebounds after a wetter monsoon season, it could lend additional proof to the concept low trogon numbers mirror unusually arid circumstances that even have affected different chook species, says Edwin Juarez, a biologist on the Arizona Recreation and Fish Division.

But when the counts proceed to say no within the coming years, Juarez says, it could be a purple flag signaling a big and probably worrisome shift for these northernmost birds. What that will imply for trogons nesting within the sky islands is difficult to say—too little is understood about all of the elements concerned—however the surveys may also help detect inhabitants modifications and information conservation measures like these beneath the Arizona Important Bird Areas Program, he says. The science-based program was established by Audubon and the Tucson chapter and goals to learn key habitats for the state’s chook populations of best conservation want—a designation that features the Elegant Trogon.

Again in Madera Canyon, Vazquez, Grbic, and Davis come throughout 38 chook species, together with a Zone-tailed Hawk, a Yellow-rumped Warbler, a Dusky-capped Flycatcher, and greater than 10 varieties of hummingbirds. At one level, they hear a male trogon’s repetitive name that Davis likens to a canine’s bark, however they by no means spot the chook. Then, a few half-hour later, they leap on the fleeting sight of a darting trogon and observe its flight path with binoculars. However the chook—a feminine, as indicated by its extra delicate browns and pinks—quickly vanishes. “It landed in some tree and I by no means noticed it once more,” Grbic says.

The hours move and trogons stay elusive. Vazquez says she would have favored to see one perched in a sycamore. However she, Davis, and Grbic all agree that their transient take a look at a trogon in flight was a thrill, and even listening to one chook name was value all their effort. They be ok with doing their half to assist shield the Elegant Trogon and different species sharing its habitat. They wish to maintain listening to its name echoing via these canyons.