This is a birding story and begins before dawn in the cloud forest above Lake Atitlán in the western Maya highlands of Guatemala. I forgot my headlamp (I always forget my headlamp) so I made my way down the rough road on the edge of the Mirador Rey Tepepul Regional Park by the glow of the lights bobbing on the foreheads of others in our small group of forest guides and TNC staff.
The call of a Mexican whippoorwill drifted through the cool, black dark, but I couldn’t locate it before we stepped off the road and onto the trail. We were on a tight timeline this morning, focused on a quest to find a male resplendent quetzal—one of the most magnificent birds in the world, a king of the cloud forest, and sacred to indigenous cultures throughout Central America.
Our intrepid birding guide, Sarah Quiejú, thought our best chance to see one would be to catch him “eating breakfast” and we still had a few kilometers of steep, twisty trail to navigate.
All of which is how I found myself sometime later—muddy, tired, and breathless, washed in the milky light of dawn on the side of a volcano—staring at a tree.
The Quetzal and the Aguacatillo
Specifically, I am staring at an aguacatillo tree that Sarah says is where “the quetzal likes to eat his breakfast.” Since Sarah clearly knows her birds and her forest, we settle into a wide curve in the trail to wait and watch.
Resplendents eat other things, of course, but from studies done on the birds in Costa Rica, the fruits of the aguacatillo seem to be the perennial favorite. There are a variety of different aguacatillo species, but in this part of Guatemala, resplendents apparently prefer Octoea and Nectandra.
Aguacatillos (or “little avocados”) are trees in the laurel family (Lauracaea) and their fruits are a key part of the resplendent quetzal’s diet. They are rich in the fats the birds need to survive the cool, damp conditions of the cloud forests, in the Mesoamerican Forest Bridge from Mexico to Panama, where the birds live.
These trees fruit once a year and the birds are perfectly adapted to dine on them—with powerful flight muscles that allow them to perform the distinctive “quetzal hover,” they pluck fruits from the highest reaches of the tree canopy. They also have large beaks and strong, muscular throats that enable them to swallow the aguacatillo fruits and then regurgitate the seeds, which, to my eye, look to be about the size and shape of an uncracked North American pecan.
“The quetzal,” explains Esteban Vásquez Quejú, who is Maya Tz’utujil, as well as the lead Park Ranger for the Municipality of Santiago Atitlán, Rey Tepepul Regional Park, “does more than just feed on the forest. It also nurtures it by digesting the aguacatillo fruit and dispersing its seeds. This helps regenerate the forest and maintain the balance here.”
It’s a fairly straightforward equation that plays out all over resplendent quetzal habitat. Without aguacatillos, no quetzals. The problem now is the cloud forests the birds need are increasingly threatened by the loss of habitat, including aguacatillos. The forest suffers from climate change, fire, land clearing for agriculture and development, or really from various combinations of all of the above.
And it’s not just about the quetzals. In conservation, it’s never about just one thing. It’s about how everything connects.
Connections and Connectivity
Aguacatillos provide food for any number of birds and mammals native to the cloud forest. They are also, like other trees and shrubs here, important for preventing erosion and keeping soil on the mountainside, slowing down the flow of water and protecting the quantity and quality of the water that eventually filters out of the forest to the lakes, rivers and streams below.
The waters of Lake Atitlán are born in the cloud forest. But the cloud forest is in trouble. And if the forest is in trouble, says Sarah, so is everything and everyone else, including the quetzals.
A guide certified by INGUAT, the Guatemalan Tourism Institute, Sarah is the only female guide in the region, and has been leading birders up and down the slopes of the volcanoes around Lake Atitlán for 5 years. She has seen firsthand how changes, especially the loss of habitat, has hurt the local resplendent quetzal population. “In previous years,” she says quietly as we watch our aguacatillo branch, “we would see groups of 15 or 16 quetzals together, but this year, the largest group observed is only eight.”
Over half of Guatemala’s forests have been lost in the last 50 years as intensive agriculture and industrial development expand. As the forests are fragmented, the connections—like those between the quetzals and aguacatillos—are lost, but it is that ecological connectivity, especially across the Mesoamerican Forest Bridge, that is vital for maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem services, and resilience to climate change in Guatemala.
Bringing Back the Forest
But the forests here are not a lost cause. Joint reforestation efforts in Guatemala have long been a pillar of TNC’s work with local communities and partners, strengthening both forest cover and ecosystem connectivity. In the Mesoamerican Forest Bridge, more than 2,000 hectares have been restored since 2008, with the leadership of indigenous communities and the support of programs such as Plant-a-Billion Trees and the Arbor Day Foundation.
These actions, carried out in partnership with organizations such as ECO, CDRO, TIKONEL, FUNCAGUA, and other partners, not only contribute to ecological restoration but also generate local income through INAB forestry incentives and strengthen community capacities to sustainably manage their forests and water sources.
Reversing habitat loss and restoring the health of the cloud forest is one of the key reasons the leadership of indigenous communities is so important here. Their ancestral practices and spirituality reflect a deep connection to the land and waters, and especially to the resplendent quetzal.
“The bird is a vital part of Maya Guatemalan identity,” says Cesar Cate, who is Maya Kaqchikel and a TNC freshwater conservation specialist in Guatemala. “Protecting and restoring the quetzal’s habitat preserves not only the species but also Maya heritage and its future. For us, there is no difference between people and nature. We are part of biodiversity. We are nature. Protecting biodiversity means protecting ourselves and our culture.”
Today, indigenous communities in the highlands continue to lead conservation efforts, including restoring aguacatillos and other native cloud forest species. It’s not a fast or simple process, but it does work. It’s also a process that involves many partners and participants. The trees for restoration are grown in a nearby native plant nursery supported by TNC, managed by local association Vivamos Mejor and funded through the Darwin Initiative from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) of the British Government.
When the aguacatillos are large enough to be replanted—which usually, depending on the species, takes about 14 months—they are taken to restoration sites within the forest. Restoring native trees here often means carrying them by foot over several kilometers of steep, winding trails and then planting them by hand.
Then, of course, the trees have to grow. It all takes a special combination of time, indigenous knowledge, science and, well, hope. Restoration is, always, ultimately about the art of the possible and the courage of a commitment to see it through.
“It Flies Like a Serpent”
We are still waiting and watching our aguacatillo tree. Sarah has, amazingly, produced a thermos of coffee and several small cups from her pack. I am starting to console myself that, even if I didn’t get to see a resplendent quetzal, I still heard and saw fascinating birds (Mexican whippoorwill and horned guan, especially) and got to spend a morning hiking in the cloud forest.
Everyone but Sarah seems to have lost hope the quetzal will appear. She is placidly sipping her second cup of coffee when she, and the rangers with us, suddenly turn their heads. I hadn’t heard or seen anything change, but these are people who know the forest and its sounds as well as they know their families.
And there it is, like a blessing from the forest.
A male resplendent quetzal, flying toward our aguacatillo tree, his two upper coverts (essentially tail feathers) rippling and twining behind him. Esteban, the park ranger, had told me that in his Maya Tz’utujil culture and dialect, the resplendent quetzal is called “tete uk matz,” which means “it flies like a serpent.” And now I understand why. The long feathers streaming behind the quetzal undulate as gracefully as if the bird were a snake were flying on the wind.
The resplendent quetzal deserves every syllable of its superlative name. My vocabulary of colors is not up to the task of describing the varying shades of red, green, gold and white embodied in the bird before me. Even in the shadowed light of the early morning, his colors are deep and rich and striking. Seeing a male resplendent quetzal in full sun, with light turning its iridescent feathers even more dazzling to the eye, must be like seeing some kind of unworldly mirage of a bird.
I start to feel a little lightheaded and realize I’m holding my breath. The quetzal is perched on his branch, giving us a clear view as he, as Sarah predicted, eats his breakfast. We’re close enough to watch (through binoculars and scopes) as his throat works and a seed—possibly from an aguacatillo—appears and disappears in his beak.
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