Pharomachrus mocinno
Drawn from open occurrence records in and around Manuel Antonio, aggregated onto a 25 km grid. A cell is matched by its centre, which can sit up to 16 km outside the boundary, so this covers the surrounding country too.
Occurrence records measure where people looked and found something, which is not the same as where the animal is. This is a relative likelihood, not a probability.
Records exist for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December, with the widest coverage in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, October, November and December. A quiet month can mean the animal was absent, or that nobody was looking.
A grid cell is a square of the map, not a sighting: 3 squares of 25 km carry records for Resplendent Quetzal in and around Manuel Antonio, and the 1,288 records behind them were collected by other people and published openly. Nothing here counts animals, and a place with more records is not always a place with more animals.
The Aztecs and the Maya prized its feathers above gold, and it still gives Guatemala both its national bird and the name of its currency. The green is not pigment but structure, microscopic layers in the feather splitting light, which is why a bird that looked emerald on one branch turns deep blue-violet on the next. The male grows two uppertail coverts that trail well past half a metre, streaming behind him in flight and curling out of the nest hole while he sits. He is easy to walk past. Quetzals perch still and upright for long stretches, facing away, and the green back against wet leaves is close to perfect camouflage; most people find their first one because a guide heard the call, a soft rising and falling whistle, long before anyone saw the bird. Look for movement at the fruiting wild avocados in the first two hours of light.
Never play recordings during nesting season.