Letter to Mr. Cuttatree
Dear Mr. Cuttatree,
I am the Resplendent Quetzal. I am writing to you today to tell you a bit about myself and what I do for the rain forest so you may consider not building the Uppity Resort.
My scientific name is Pharomachrus Moccino. I am said to be the most beautiful bird in the world. I have a green head, a blue back, a red chest, and the rest of my feathers are black and white. The magnificent tail feathers that I have are two feet long, almost three times as long as my body! The fuzz on my head is green and sticks straight up. My beak is small and is a yellow orange in color.
I eat many things like a variety of fruits that grow on a variety of trees. If you cut them all down, my friends will die. I eat things like figs and a variety of insects that all live in the rain forest. My favorite foods are wild avacadoes! I swallow them whole and regurgitate the pits onto the ground. I help the trees spread. I eat things like lizards, frogs, snails, and larvae. My babies eat invertebrate, reptiles, and amphibians, but begin to eat fruit as they mature.
My eggs and young ones are food for toucans. The kinkajou, jays, squirrels, and weasels will eat me too. Hawks, Owls, and other birds of prey will also enjoy me. I have to protect my children. The way I do this is I peck out a hole in a thick branch of a tree. I will make my nest in the hole and sit on the nest, taking turns with a male bird. I keep them there under me or the male and the one who is not sitting on the eggs or young goes to hunt. We also keep them there until they are strong enough to fly. When they are, they leave the nest and are on their own. There is a lot of great sadness, though, only about 20% of the young we produce lives to leave the nest.
A type of symbiosis there is between the avacado tree and me is I spread the seeds of the tree around the rain forest. If the rainforest did not have me, they would die. The avacado tree would die. So would the kinkajou, the hawk, the owl, and all the other animals that eat me. Then the hawk who eats mice would die and then there would be too many mice and things like that.
Respectfully,
Resplendent Quetzal
I eat many things like a variety of fruits that grow on a variety of trees. If you cut them all down, my friends will die. I eat things like figs and a variety of insects that all live in the rain forest. My favorite foods are wild avacadoes! I swallow them whole and regurgitate the pits onto the ground. I help the trees spread. I eat things like lizards, frogs, snails, and larvae. My babies eat invertebrate, reptiles, and amphibians, but begin to eat fruit as they mature.
My eggs and young ones are food for toucans. The kinkajou, jays, squirrels, and weasels will eat me too. Hawks, Owls, and other birds of prey will also enjoy me. I have to protect my children. The way I do this is I peck out a hole in a thick branch of a tree. I will make my nest in the hole and sit on the nest, taking turns with a male bird. I keep them there under me or the male and the one who is not sitting on the eggs or young goes to hunt. We also keep them there until they are strong enough to fly. When they are, they leave the nest and are on their own. There is a lot of great sadness, though, only about 20% of the young we produce lives to leave the nest.
A type of symbiosis there is between the avacado tree and me is I spread the seeds of the tree around the rain forest. If the rainforest did not have me, they would die. The avacado tree would die. So would the kinkajou, the hawk, the owl, and all the other animals that eat me. Then the hawk who eats mice would die and then there would be too many mice and things like that.
Respectfully,
Resplendent Quetzal
