How to identify the quetzal-one of the world’s most dazzling birds inhabiting Costa Rica’s cloud forests

There’s an Aztec king’s headdress — the final of its form — within the assortment of Vienna’s Weltmuseum Wien, made with almost 400 iridescent emerald tail feathers from the quetzal chicken, which have been stitched right into a half-moon fan. So uncommon are the feathers and so vivid — regardless of being greater than 500 years outdated — that the artefact, apparently from Mexico, is reportedly value $50m (£38m). Yet nothing might presumably trump the actual chicken in entrance of me.

“They used to call it the feathered serpent,” says my information, Carlos Serrano Navarro, as we watch the chicken flit between moss-cloaked branches heavy with bromeliads within the high-altitude cloud forest of San Gerardo de Dota. Its nickname is smart: the quetzal is such a prized species for birdwatchers due to its lengthy tail, which may attain as much as a metre and provides the impression of a writhing snake in flight.

It’s little surprise the Aztecs and Mayans thought the quetzal so treasured. “It was forbidden to kill this bird as they believed it was a representation of one of their gods — Kukulkan,” explains Carlos, as he describes the Aztec and Mayan feathered serpent deity. The quetzal’s feathers had been gathered from the forest as soon as they had been shed, after which traded for meals, garments and even gold.

Sporting a hoop by his nostril, my 28-year-old information tells me he’s been monitoring quetzals for a decade; he realized from his father, who’s additionally a information. “My great-grandfather was a pioneer. He came here in the 1950s to farm cattle when the Costa Rican government was giving away land,” he says, by no means taking his eye away from the chicken. His great-grandfather quickly realised the worth of San Gerardo was in its birdlife and he grew to become {one of the} first to set-up a guesthouse geared toward birdwatchers.

A two-hour drive south east of San José, San Gerardo is a six-mile-long, mountain-ringed valley off the Pan American Highway with no through-road. A wholesome inhabitants of quetzals lives right here year-round, because of wildlife protections and the abundance of untamed avocados, their favorite meals. Sightings are virtually assured. “We think we have 100 pairs of quetzals on this six miles of road and, of course, many more deeper into the forest that we’ve never seen,” says Carlos.

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He factors to a line of coyotes choosing their method alongside a precipitous mountain path, excessive above the quetzal’s avocado bushes. Traffic indicators line the mountain street warning of tapirs crossing, although they’re laborious to identify. Meanwhile, tiny volcano hummingbirds, no greater than area mice, buzz round branches, and large, black guan birds circle and land on the grassy decrease slopes. Carlos spots a northern emerald toucanet, its giant, hooked beak unmistakable because it hides in a bowery.

The shimmering flash of the quetzal’s tail grabs my consideration once more. It settles on a department and Carlos’s tripod-mounted recognizing scope brings the chicken into sharp focus: a punk-like mohawk head crest and blood-red breast reveal themselves, the latter rising and falling because it requires its mate — a ritual that Carlos says is as common as clockwork.

“Their feathers are like prisms,” he tells me. “If you look at one under a microscope, you’d see layers of keratin and melanin, and that’s what’s refracting the light.” To show his level, he produces a quetzal tail feather that he has pressed between the pages of a birding e book. Sure sufficient, the feather I’d been satisfied was emerald inexperienced turns into sapphire blue, then golden because it shifts within the solar. It’s a chameleon-like potential virtually worthy of the good feathered serpent Kukulkan. I can see why the Aztecs valued the quetzal greater than gold.