THE NERINA TROJAN / NARINA TROGON Apaloderma narina
Distribution: The Narina Trogon as has large range of about 9,300,000 km. It occurs in Africa, south of the Sahara desert, from Ghana to Ethiopia, to Somalia, Sierra Leone and kenya, extending south to Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe and northern Botswana.
Status: Widespread throughout its large range, the Narina Trogon is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.Though this bird is not threatened, it thends to be outcompeted for nesting sites in urban areas by Sturnus vulgaris (Common starling)
Habitat: Scarce or absent from very arid regions, the Nerina Trojan prefers indigenous forests, be they evergreen lowland or afromontane, and riverine forest in savanna with acacia, mopane, zambezi teak or ironwood trees. It can also be found in moist thornveld and coastal bush and is comon up to 3000m.
General habits: Although reasonably common, it is a shy, unobtrusive bird, found either singly or in pairs. The Nerina Trojan is easy to verlook, as well, despite its bright colours, because it often sits very still in an upright, though slightly hunched, position.
Feeding habits: This bird feeds mainly on insects, and small invertebrates (butterflies, caterpillars, moths, spiders, mantids, cicadas, grasshoppers, beetles, termite alates) but also on fruit and rarely chameleons or other small reptiles (skinks). It hunts by sitting motionlessly on a perch, occasionally moving its head side to side and up and down, looking for prey. Once the prey is located, the bird rapidly flies to it with highly manoeverable twists and turns, grabbing it before returning to its perch. It takes caterpillars from twigs and foliage or hawks for insects in flight.
Breeding habits: The Nerina Trojan is a monogamous, solitary nester, with very strong pair bonds. Courtship is highly elaborate, and includes a "floating lek", in which between 3 and 7 males compete by aerially chasing each other, which allows the females to pick out their mates. Additional courtship displays follow for a few more days.In this period the pair choses a nest site.
Nest: The Nerina Trojan nests in natural tree cavities, usually 3-5m above ground (but possibly 2-16m) which are very difficult to find. The favoured trees for this nest seem to be the Cape-teak, the Forest bushwillow, the White milkwood, the Forest bush-milkwood, the Sneezewood or the Wild fig.
Eggs: 2-4 eggs are laid from November to February and incubated by both sexes, for 16-21 days.
Young: The chicks are brooded in the early stages of their life, staying the nest for 25-28 days. It is mainly the father`s duty to feed its offsprings, roughly 3 times an hour. He gives them roughly the same food adults eat: butterflies, moths, cicadas, bladder grasshoppers, stick insects, mantids. The young birds remain with their parents months after fledging, even when they can get their own food.
Description: The Nerina Trojan, which measures up to 34cm from beak to tail, is a medium-sized largely green bird. The male has vivid green upperparts, greyish wings, bright red underparts and patches of blue skin on the face. The female has a brown face, a purplish green plumage, a blue circle around each eye and is duller red below.
Did you know: Nerina Trojan Apaloderma narina is just one of almost 40 trogon species that inhabit forested regions of the world. But only three of these species are found in Africa. Apaloderma, the generic name for these birds, means ‘thin skinned’. It was given to them because of the fact that it has a very thin skin, indeed, that tears easily when skinned!
The Nerina Trojan is a beautiful trogon which was named after Narina, the Khoikhoi (Hottentot) mistress of the French ornithologist François Le Vaillant, in the 18th century.
The Nerina Trojan is also called: Narina Trogon [English]; Bosloerie [Afrikaans]; Intshatshongo [Xhosa]; Trogon Narina [French]; Narina-trogon [Dutch]; NarinaTrogon, Zügeltrogon [German]; Trogón de Narina [Spanish]; NarinaTrogon [Swedish]; Trogone Narina [Italian]; Republicano [Portuguese]; Narina Trogono [Esperanto].
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