a Great Blue Heron, a bird (see Hunn, attestations); and, a farming tool (like a coa) with a animal design on the handle (see attestations in Spanish)
Ā-XOQUEN, Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) [FC: 28 Axoquen] “It resembles the [Sandhill Crane, Grus canadensis) [in color]; it is ashen, grey. It smells of fish….” Martin del Campo suggested this is the Little Blue Heron (Egretta caerulea), apparently because the Spanish version indicates that it is “much smaller” than the crane. However, the Little Blue Heron is less likely to occur in the Valley of Mexico than the Great Blue Heron, and the Great Blue Heron, in my opinion, is more likely to have been compared to the Sandhill Crane [TOCUIL-COYŌ-TL] and is often called “crane” in local vernaculars. Also, the Aztec scribes compared the size of this bird to that of the Wood Stork [CUA-PETLA-HUAC].
The Matrícula de Huexotzinco includes glyphs of this tool. See, for example, f. 535r.
huictli axoquen = coa con mango zoomorfo