Trogon rufus
Silhouette: Edwin Price · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~30%
The Amazonian black-throated trogon (Trogon rufus) is a bird in the family Trogonidae, the trogons and quetzals. Although it has also been called "yellow-bellied trogon" it is not the only trogon with a yellow belly (such a description would apply to the Black-headed trogon, or the Citreoline trogon as well). It is found in every mainland South American country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
The Amazonian black-throated trogon was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the other trogons in the genus Trogon and coined the binomial name Trogon rufus. Gmelin based his description on the "Couroucou à queue rousse de Cayenne" that had been described and illustrated in 1779 by the French polymath Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. Buffon's specimen was a female with brown upperparts that had been collected in Cayenne. It later gained the English name "black-throated trogon". The specific epithet rufus is Latin for "red" or "ruddy".
The black-throated trogon was long treated as having six subspecies... Wikipedia →
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Black-throated Trogon sighting in Arenal Volcano National Park on a given day, based on 818 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 190th most-seen of the 503 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 30%, if each day is a fresh chance.
February–March, May, October and December
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Black-throated Trogon in Arenal Volcano National Park on a given day, against under 5% in January, April, June–September and November, the lowest months.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Black-throated Trogon sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
20th of 34
Of the 34 parks where we can rate Black-throated Trogon sightings, Arenal Volcano National Park ranks 20th at about 10%. The best odds are in Corcovado National Park (Costa Rica, about 40%), Soberanía National Park (Panama, about 30%) and Brownsberg Nature Park (Suriname, about 20%). All parks ranked.
Same genus: Trogon
The closest relatives of the Black-throated Trogon that you can see in Arenal Volcano National Park (genus Trogon, New World Trogons) are Gartered Trogon (about 20%), Collared Trogon (about 10%) and Slaty-tailed Trogon (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Black-throated Trogon is recorded against all the birds logged in Arenal Volcano National Park (818 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
