CHIL-CANAUH-TLI, literally, “red duck,” Cinnamon Teal (Spatula cyanoptera) [FC: 37-38 Chilcanauhtli] “It is named chilcanauhtli because its head, breast, back, tail are all like tawny chili.” See also CANAUH-TLI duck.
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1963); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.
The Florentine Codex includes a painting of this bird in Book 11, folio 39r. This source, below, concurs with the translation of cinnamon teal (in Spanish, pato colorado o cerceta).
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 39r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/39r/images/0 Accessed 17 October 2025.