CON-CANAUH-TLI, literally, “pot duck,” Fulvous Whistling-Duck (Dendrocygna bicolor) [FC: :26 Concanauhtli] “… is ashen, large, squat. It is wide-billed, broad-billed, broad-footed, wide-footed…. It is a dweller in the lagoon here
, and here it raises its young, builds its nests, lays eggs, sits, hatches its young.” Martin del Campo identified this as the Greater White-fronted Goose (Anser albifrons). However, no geese are known to nest in Mexico. The Greater White-fronted is now known only as a winter visitor to northern Mexico. It is remotely possible that this goose once nested in the Valley of Mexico but is now known to nest only in arctic Alaska and Canada. Note also this elaboration: “The Çoquicanauhtli is the same as . It also breeds among the reeds. However, its feathers are smoky, sooty” [FC: 57]. The best local candidate that fits the details described is the Fulvous Whistling-Duck. Though typically a resident, nesting along both coasts, it is “nomadic and unpredictable” and has been recorded in the Valley of Mexico (Howell & Webb). Martin del Campo also identified TLALALACA-TL as the White-fronted Goose, though the accompanying description fit the Black-bellied Whistling-Duck (Dendrocygna autumnalis) much better. Whistling-Ducks are somewhat more closely related to geese than the more typical ducks (subfamily Anserinae, versus subfamily Anatinae). See ZOQUI-CANAUH-TLI; see also TLALALACA-TL and CANAUH-TLI .
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); Rafael Martín del Campo, “Ensayo de interpretación del Libro Undecimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún – 11 Las Aves (1),” Anales del Instituto de Biología Tomo XI, Núm. 1 (México, D.F., 1940); Steven N. G. Howell and Sophie Webb. A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America (Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, Tokyo, 1995); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.