Gould's specimen in the illustration was sent from Merida, Mexico, but most examples of this trogon came from Bogota, Columbia. Gould also had a specimen sent directly from Bogota, by Professor William Jameson, (1796-1873), Scottish botanist and physician who settled in Quito, Ecuador, from 1827. This species, one of the largest trogons, lives among the tallest trees of the humid cloudforests.
In the 1860s and 1870s Gould was also in the process of publishing The Birds of Great Britain and was particularly interested in depicting juvenile birds to show their short-lived variation in plumage. He was pleased that it was possible to illustrate an immature trogon, and compare it with the adults illustrated in the previous plate, Monograph of the Trogonidae, 2nd edition, pl.4. The adult male has a red breast, green back, black tail, golden-bronze head and yellow bill. The younger bird does not have the golden head or yellow bill, and its wings are blackish-brown with golden tips.
J.Gould, The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1842, IX, p.238
DISTRIBUTION: Southern Central and western South America in eastern Panama and from Colombia and western Venezuela south through the Andes of Ecuador and Peru to central Bolivia.
Considered by some to be a subspecies of the Pavonine Quetzal Pharomachus pavoninus