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Since the 1890s, the possibility of seeing a trogon has lured birdwatchers to southern Arizona. With its brilliant metallic colors and odd croaking call, the Elegant Trogon brings an exotic touch to the wooded canyons and streamside sycamores where it lives. The observer who finds one may get to watch it at leisure: rather sluggish, the trogon may sit upright on one perch for several minutes.

Long regarded as a rare and elusive specialty of the Mexican mountains, this big trogon stunned birders by appearing north of the border in 1977, with a family group in Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains. Since then it has occurred several more times in Arizona, in at least four ranges, and has been found nesting. Only a distant relative of the Elegant Trogon, this species is more closely related to the quetzals of the deep tropics.