Alfred Newton

“ The Quezal is hardly so big as a Turtle-Dove. The cock has a fine yellow bill and a head bearing a rounded crest of filamentous feathers; lanceolate scapulars overhang the wings, and from the rump spring the long flowing plumes which are so characteristic of the species, and were so highly prized by the natives before the Spanish conquest that no one was allowed to kill the bird when taken, but only to divest it of its feathers, which were to be worn by the chiefs alone. These plumes, the middle and longest of which may measure from 3 ft. ”

“ QUEZAL, or Quesal, the Spanish-American name for one of the most beautiful of birds, abbreviated from the Aztec or Maya Quetzal-tototl, the last part of the compound word meaning fowl, and the first, also written Cuetzal, the long feathers of rich green with which it is adorned. ”

“ Yet little or nothing was generally known about the bird until Delattre sent an account of his meeting with it to the Echo du monde savant for 1843, which was reprinted in the Revue zoologique for that year (pp. 163–165) . In 1860 the nidification of the species, about which strange stories had been told to the naturalist last named, was determined, and its eggs, of a pale
Quezal, male and female. ”