cuachilton.

CUACHIL-LI/CUACHIL-TON, Common Gallinule (Gallinula galeata) [FC: 27 Quachilton] “It lives on the water; it belongs with the ducks. Its head is chili-red, its bill pointed. It lives, it is hatched only here, among the reeds.” Martin del Campo identified this bird as the American Coot (Fulica americana). However, I suspect the description better fits the coot’s close relative, the Common Gallinule, which sports a conspicuous red frontal shield. The coot, by contrast, shows only a rather obscure purplish bump on its white bill. See also YACA-CIN-TLI, the American Coot.
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); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

For an image of the cuachilton, see the Florentine Codex, Book 11, folio 27r.
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 27r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/27r/images/c72ee4e1-e... Accessed 16 October 2025.